This sounds like something that cab be also told a decade or two ago but it is yet to be true. I dont see it is being changed anytime soo
Video Games Are the Future of Education
261–270 of 392 posts
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems the author is not thinking about games (educational or not) in the common sense, but in way broader terms: > A video game is just: > > (a) a simulation of reality > (b) with fast feedback loops. I’d agree with both of you. “Educational” games are a hard sell. I’m a parent and the educational mini-games pushed by school is boring to death and won’t stick with my kid. It’s hard to articulate, but the underlyin…
I'd argue that micro controllers and educational/programmable robots fit into this category as well. They allow the kind of play and learning that makes them both engaging and valuable for education.
Totally. The lego technic sets are a boon in that respect, mindstorms being a very good entrypoint to programming (“telling a machine to do stuff on its own”) in particular, and to engineering in general.
The new Spike set looks promising.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would think Maxis actually tells you the best way to be a success. Maxis doesn't say their games are educational and players don't feel like they're trying to be. But they were, and Maxis wanted them to be. I've heard Will Wright talk about giving his kids things like microscopes as "toys" that let them play and explore which causes them to sort of learn against their best intentions. If I were to get into the educ…
I think the indirect approach is very underrated. Our kids have all learned to read ahead of “schedule” because they wanted to understand what was happening in their games, and they’re all also coming along very quickly at arithmetic because of needing to manage the economy of whatever game they’re playing. As a kid, I picked up a familiarity with history and geography that was miles ahead of my peers due to games li…
> I think people innately want to learn whatever they need to know to accomplish their goals
What if I told you that (morpheus.jpg) this has been common knowledge in pedagogical research for over half a century now, and that pretty much all attempts of reforming education in the light of that simple fact have failed :(
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
@adrianhon: here's my trick. Instead of creating serious games. Teach people to be serious players! I have learned a ton from the following games: - Poker (statistics) - Any game (English) - Factorio (programming / software design) - Warcraft 3 (mental arithmetic and resource management) - World of Warcraft (market manipulation -- I created a temporary monopoly on an item and earned 500 gold within an hour as level 2…
One trend I've found interesting is take industrial design software tools (things for CAD, PCB, FPGA, etc) and then 'dumb' them down and add hostile creatures to destroy the player's designs. It's not a bad method. Literally, make simple code and add hostile bugs to it.
Coding-inspired puzzle games appeal to quite a few people.
Zachtronics does some very good abstract ones. Quite a few of his games are even outright gamifying assembly programming. Things like factorio are on the more 'applied' or concrete end of the spectrum.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#265I own a educational game company. Long story short: it doesn't sell. At my company we identified, at least if your target is kids, two ways to sell edu games. 1. Sell them to institutions, like governments, schools, companies, whatever. Thing is, the features they look when choosing a game to buy, are ones most likely to make the game unfun, the end result is often boring stuff noone WANTS to play. 2. Sell them to th…
It seems the author is not thinking about games (educational or not) in the common sense, but in way broader terms: > A video game is just: > > (a) a simulation of reality > (b) with fast feedback loops. I’d agree with both of you. “Educational” games are a hard sell. I’m a parent and the educational mini-games pushed by school is boring to death and won’t stick with my kid. It’s hard to articulate, but the underlyin…
The author even mentioned how games designed to be educational are usually boring and not well received.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#266I own a educational game company. Long story short: it doesn't sell. At my company we identified, at least if your target is kids, two ways to sell edu games. 1. Sell them to institutions, like governments, schools, companies, whatever. Thing is, the features they look when choosing a game to buy, are ones most likely to make the game unfun, the end result is often boring stuff noone WANTS to play. 2. Sell them to th…
I think this post wasn't about dedicated educational games, but rather education they occured naturally through gaming. E.g. Kerbal space program teaching basics of aerospace. One of the most prominent examples I had in my childhood was Fire Emblem for thr game boy. It's basically Kumon, you're constantly doing basic multiplication, addition, and substraction to tell whether a given unit will win in a fight. Similarl…
In fact, the author even said games designed around education are usually boring or not well received.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#267What consistently gets missed in educational software is that it tries to teach rote memorization through gameplay rather than process. Games excel at teaching process quickly - learn by doing, learn by experiencing. And yet we have had 30+ years of crappy games about jumping on the right number to learn multiplication tables.
Games should supplement traditional education, not attempt to replace it. They should fill in the gaps and extend what can be taught. Teach the scientific method through a mystery game where you have to compound evidence to validate a theory (or better yet, invalidate it - equally valuable). Instead of math word problems have characters with problems you can solve using various methods - don't make the player do the math, train them to identify the right tool to use (a geometry problem, an algebra problem, a calculus problem).
Fill in those educational gaps that people only improve by stumbling in the dark.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case though, you're stopping the game to teach strategies on how to win the game.
But for some kids, the mere act of stopping the game and stepping in as the authority to "teach" is enough to shut them down. Video games are good at getting through to those who don't respond well to adults stepping in and contextualizing things all the time.
Yes, the computer stopping things is often easier for kids (and people in general) to accept than another human ordering them around. I guess it feels more like a force of nature than an agent to be argued with.
Folklore has it, that Haskell's linter hlint was created so that the author could help his wife's coding without jeopardizing their marriage. The extra indirection step helped.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have a lot of laments about "media connections" to let people know about your business. I think you're looking at this wrong. It's not about "connections." It's about doing business the old-fashioned way: advertising, and hiring a public relations agency. Advertising is self-explanatory. But for some reason a lot of tech companies don't hire PR firms. They like to cheap out and do PR in-house, or they simply neve…
Do you have any hints on how to pick a good PR firm? The last thing anyone needs is to hire one who thinks it's a really neato idea to buy a few weeks' worth of pop-unders on the OANN website.
The last thing anyone needs is to hire one who thinks it's a really neato idea to buy a few weeks' worth of pop-unders on the OANN website.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding about what a PR company does. You're thinking about an advertising agency. They're not the same thing.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Like Minecraft, Age of Empires, Sim City or Kerbal Space Program. But noone would see them or describe them as "educational" games." And that's the problem. Because they are educational. And because they are both educational and fun, people are much more engaged to learn from them than from "real" educational games. People who play Europe Universalis learn way more about early modern history than they ever learned…
Geology is a big part of Dwarf Fortress. They take their different stone types very serious. About 'German Grammar': check out Heaven's Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Vault But honestly, humans don't learn languages by understand their grammars with the logic part of their brain. Games would be ideal to produce comprehensible input, and test players on their comprehension via actions, instead of makin…
+1 for Dwarf Fortress. That is a mind expanding game no matter who you are or how you approach it. It would be interesting seeing it played among a wide range of children. I know first-hand it really helped me through geology, remembering different rock types and the nuances involved with them.