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Video Games Are the Future of Education

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Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#321

Post by imtringued »

Balgair wrote: post #241
foobiekr wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like Factorio but I think it's a bit of a stretch to describe it as teaching programming or software design. Maybe, conceptually, data flow. Certainly, Human Resource Machine does teach programming.

Factorio is very close to Eagle and other PCB designing tools.

I have only used KiCad and I actually don't see the similarity.

In KiCad you start by designing a circuit schematic first. In Factorio you start building whatever you want. You have potentially have to create your own custom parts including their physical footprint based on existing chips. In Factorio every part is already included in the "part library".

The PCB design phase automatically connects parts with traces correctly. The human designer is just responsible for the layout. In Factorio you keep the design in your head and place each conveyor tile one by one.

PCBs usually have multiple layers and it's common to have dedicated VCC and GND planes just for power transmission. Although the electric grid in Factorio is technically a separate layer, you have to extend the grid by placing transmission lines.

I will accept that the idea of non overlapping traces/conveyor belts is similar but overall the workflow just isn't the same. To be fair I haven't actually done anything beyond following a bunch of tutorials on making PCBs. I have yet to send a design to a manufacturer. It's possible that Eagle and Altium are significantly different to KiCad but I personally stick with opensource tools and even if they may have significantly worse UX I actually love the extra challenge. Just shows that other than paying bills to stay alive nothing on this planet should prevent you from learning electronic design, mechanical design and software development on your own.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#322

Post by amatic »

GuiA wrote: post #263
ksdale wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :(

That sounds very interesting, could you elaborate or provide some links? Aren't there successful 'alternative' school programs?

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#323

Post by amatic »

wolfgke wrote: post #320
eru wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But honestly, humans don't learn languages by understand their grammars with the logic part of their brain. As a native German speaker, I disagree. For me, the German grammar (in particular the declination system) is what I would consider the type system of the German language. So yes, I do think a lot about German sentences in terms of types/grammar that are/is involved. EDIT: When I was a pupil at school, the onl…

Well, you did learn to understand German sentences way before school and grammar, I think that was the point. A baby can learn any language without studying its grammar, and in the early period not being able to pronounce the words.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#324

Post by imtringued »

tchaffee wrote: post #84

Hot takes from people with no experience in the field are only interesting to other people who have no experience in the field. It seems developers are particularly prone to this hubris. I don't find many doctors writing about the future of programming languages, or teachers writing blogs about the future of medicine. Yet you can find thousands of these hot takes from developers about the future of education. Or pick…

You might not understand the nature of video games if you compare it with an extremely narrow topic like cryptography. Video games are closer to media than to a tool that enables a certain outcome. The definition of a game according to Total Biscuit was basically "A game must have an explicit or implied failure state". The potential space for things that can be considered a game is incredibly vast but it is still a powerful enough definition to exclude other vast forms of media such as audio, video, written text or static visuals.

Obviously the idea of a silver bullet doesn't work. The term "media mix" exists for a reason. Popular franchises are conveyed through lots of different media and the same is also happening in education. Video games are just adding to the "media mix" not replacing it.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#325

Post by shafyy »

shafyy wrote: post #143
speeder wrote: post #59

I 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…

We also tried to make educational games and came to a similar conclusion. The truth is, kids (or adults) don't want to play "educational" games. They just want to play fun games. And, let's be honest, games that try to teach you math or science are just not as fun as Fortnite or Minecraft. Now, you can make the case that some games are educational by mistake. Like Minecraft, Age of Empires, Sim City or Kerbal Space P…

This discussion prompted me to write a blog post about this topic: https://shafyy.com/post/education-starts-with-a-spark/

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#326

Post by amatic »

tchaffee wrote: post #84

Hot takes from people with no experience in the field are only interesting to other people who have no experience in the field. It seems developers are particularly prone to this hubris. I don't find many doctors writing about the future of programming languages, or teachers writing blogs about the future of medicine. Yet you can find thousands of these hot takes from developers about the future of education. Or pick…

> Yet you can find thousands of these hot takes from developers about the future of education. Or pick your subject.

I think you've missed one big point of the article. Videogames will become the reality of education when they become easy to make, so that it doesn't require an army of programmers to implement.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#327

Post by imtringued »

ethanbond wrote: post #198
gfodor wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people will just home school their kids. I am in the US so that is what I was referring to. Not really worth the effort trying to argue the point - many people on this site went through the US educational system and would cite it as not preparing them for their adult lives, and in many cases caused immense harm to their growth as educated citizens.

Most (all) people have no counterfactual to compare against. We can compare across cultures, though, and say that more educated ones tend to be more prosperous along nearly every dimension than less educated ones.

Have you compared the salaries of an Eastern European developer with a CS degree to the salary of a self taught developer in the USA? Economic migration is basically the act of declaring your education worthless and declaring the destination to be more important.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#328

Post by imtringued »

fullshark wrote: post #18

Look at what the “elites” do to educate their kids. Do they long to put their kids in front of a computer to play video games or do they pay top dollar for tiny teacher:student ratios at great facilities with competent teachers/leadership? I can’t imagine anyone dealing with kids learning from home this lockdown and thinking education should be more technologically driven.

Not everyone can afford a good teacher. Basically your idea is that only the rich should have access to good education.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#329

Post by dr_dshiv »

VSerge wrote: post #316
bananamerica wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A personal anecdote: I bought my first English dictionary to understand 1992’s Alone in the Dark. I’d probably not be talking with you guys and girls if not for videogames. I had no interest whatsoever in learning English, I just wanted to beat the games. If someone assigned me the very same game for educational purposes, I’d hate it by default.

Actual great learning games do exist, but the real awesome ones are rare. See this 2012 thread on a truly awesome algebra learning game, and this stays relevant to this day. To the best of my knowledge, it is still the best and fastest way to learn how to solve an equation for x. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4188579

From what I know, research does not support the idea that dragonbox is a particularly effective way to teach algebra. Which is too bad, because it seems like it would work really well:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3057889

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