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Video Games Are the Future of Education

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Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#371

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

reaperducer wrote: post #359
jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the PR firm's job to have the "media connections" you so desperately crave. Any meaningful connection is going to be too expensive for someone like GP, I am afraid. > Tech people are notoriously bad at public relations Please avoid (false) generalizations.

Any meaningful connection is going to be too expensive for someone like GP, I am afraid. This is a false generalization. You don't have to choose a big-name New York PR agency. There are thousands of other shops that are quite affordable. Some are just one or two people, and can be surprisingly effective if you pick the right one.

The PR firm is not what I said is expensive, but whatever deal you reach with the contacts they provide you.

In other words, even if the PR firm is small and one of the best and cheap, they cannot really influence much whatever their contacts offer. They may have some leverage, but the price is the price...

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#372

Post by tchaffee »

barry-cotter wrote: post #369
tchaffee wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I'm very confused by what you originally wrote: > Large parts of Africa and almost all of Latin America are more highly educated now than 1970s Europe and poorer than it. Brazil's economic growth has been between 5% and 10% since the 1970s. That's pretty respectable. So how can you claim which is the causation? > I said that education was a consequence of economic growth, not vice versa. > The most obvious examp…

> From your own source, China also has a greater proportion of the populace in third level education than France did in 1970. In fact, the chart for China looks very similar to Brazil. Yes, China got rich so it started spending money on education. That’s my point . An educated populace is a consequence of a rich one, not a cause. > Does Schooling Cause Growth or the Other Way Around? > Barro (1991) and others find th…

That study is outdated, artificially recreates some of the educational data, and does not address two keys points I made that you skipped over: 1. If you are always behind other countries in education it of course will not offer as much of a competitive advantage. 2. Quantity of education is an almost useless measure. It's quality of education that should be interesting in terms of driving economic growth.

Even their conclusion "the evidence favors..." is far less strong than your insistence that growth is definitely the causation. This is exactly why I always ask for sources.

From a more recent study that includes some meta-analysis:

> The relationship between cognitive skills and economic growth has now been demonstrated in a range of studies. As reviewed in Hanushek and Woessmann (2008), these studies employ measures of cognitive skills that draw upon the international testing of PISA and of TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) (along with earlier versions of these). The uniform result is that the international achievement measures provide an accurate measure of the skills of the labour force in different countries and that these skills are closely tied to economic outcomes. [1]

> Second, to tackle the most obvious reverse-causality issues, Hanushek and Woessmann (2009) separate the timing of the analysis by estimating the effect of scores on tests conducted until the early 1980s on economic growth in 1980-2000. In this analysis, available for a smaller sample of countries only, test scores pre-date the growth period. The estimate shows a significant positive effect that is about twice as large as the coefficient used in the simulations here. In addition, reverse causality from growth to test scores is also unlikely because additional resource in the school system (which might become affordable with increased growth) do not relate systematically to improved test scores (e.g. Hanushek, 2002). [1]

Before you get too excited that the study focuses on test scores, rather than education, I recommend you read the study.

By now it's clear to me that you're operating on confirmation bias for a personal theory you favor rather than having evaluated all of the available and most recent studies. You're working only to prove yourself right and not putting effort into proving yourself wrong. So I'm going to stop here.

[1] http://www.oecd.org/pisa/44417824.pdf

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#373

Post by greenhatglack »

cinntaile wrote: post #127
greenhatglack wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bonner basically owns and runs Scandinavia and parts of mainland Europe, you’re going up against a few countries. It’s hard, I wish you luck. Side note: Bonnier, apart from being a media empire they can destroy your life in seconds also has a schtick where they got a few companies pretending to be startups, like the example you just posted now. Some get acquired others get started by them.

They don't really own countries though, it's just a multinational media company. I don't find it very surprising that you use your mother company to increase your media presence, that seems like the right move to me? Toca Boca was part of their venture arm [0] until 2016. They invest in companies with growth potential. Sometimes those companies are early stage companies, sometimes they're a bit older. [0] https://www…

Something about life imitating art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roark_family#Cardinal_Roark

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#374

Post by antepodius »

watwut wrote: post #362
usrusr wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the scaffolding effect. Greatly illustrated by how the civ games teach about history: they teach absolutely nothing, all their models are fantastically wrong and a core element is the counterfactual nature of how a game plays out (culminating in Gandhi's bomb threats). But they give mental scaffolding that is valuable in those topics where you'd otherwise start from an empty slate. When for example you know no…

When you are making pupils memorize sequence of popes and are spicing it up with anecdotes taken out of their historical context just to be interesting, imo, the solution is not to have them play game. The solution is to work on curriculum and textbook some more.

Or not bother memorizing a sequence of popes, which itself is just a bunch of names without the historical context.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#375

Post by 6510 »

throwawaygh wrote: post #242
6510 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps a short list of things for parents to study, a little bit of reading/study material along with some tests. Shouldn't be to hard to pick some topics and crudely compile something for parents who are interested. 4 classes per year seems entirely reasonable.

> 4 classes per year seems entirely reasonable. Suggesting upper middle class stay-at-home moms should take night classes because their addition skills are worse than your average second grader sounds like a great way to _spectacularly_ lose a school board election. These people are king makers in local politics.

hah no, I mean to offer it as a free extras.

Someone taught me a cool bit of willful ignorance long ago: After choosing a profession one should try to solve all problems from that domain however poorly it fits. That way one learns relevant stuff rather than lose oneself in a second or 3rd profession. Of course it turns things into impossible challenges but if you get better at what you do the time is always worth it. A gardener should solve all his problems with gardening.

You "win" the elections by teaching (deliberately not doing everything else)

> The most frustrating thing about education is trying to explain to voters why their child has to learn something (at a young age) that the parent doesn't understand.

You mean the most challenging thing is to teach the voter why one has to learn something at a young age.

It has teaching in it twice! I would love to share my thoughts but you have near infinitely more experience doing this. (you have been warned haha!)

The challenge would be to get people to sit themselves down in front of your blackboard. Use youtube if necessary.

Then you simply brag endlessly about what you do, why you do it, what the students though hard work, your effort and good parenting have accomplished and how that will benefit them later on. Use examples!

We have a garden 6 by 12 meter with a shed in it 3 by 3 meters. The tiles are 30 by 30 cm. 72 square meter minus 9 is 63 square meters! How many tiles do we need?

10 by 10 is 100 tiles, the tiles are 30 cm long so 10 of them is 3 meters! 3 times 3 is 9 square meter! One tile is therefore?

Then you point at mum (the camera) and say correct! 9 meter is 900 cm divided by 100 is 9 square cm per tile!

We needed 63 meters which is 6300 cm therefore we need 6300 divided by 9 is 700 tiles!

Thanks to my sophisticated arithmetic I'm able to calculate such things and order my tiles without giving it a second thought.

Your kids can learn this too (point at the audience or camera again) and take on ever greater challenges in life.

~the end~

I would stand on my desk saying that but you have to give it your own style of course.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#376

Post by 6510 »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #210
6510 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps a short list of things for parents to study, a little bit of reading/study material along with some tests. Shouldn't be to hard to pick some topics and crudely compile something for parents who are interested. 4 classes per year seems entirely reasonable.

Unfortunately, the response to that is going to be something to the effect of "Are you calling me stupid?" Many parents are not going to accept that they had a bad education and could use some catch up. Even fewer are going to accept it if the catch up in question is of elementary school level.

No one is calling anyone stupid, we all know things and there are plenty of things to learn left.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#377

Post by eru »

tekkk wrote: post #161
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need a teacher to put the game in context. Let's put aside for a moment the optics of a school teacher having their class play Poker (even though obviously they wouldn't be using money). I can imagine a lesson plan going something like: 1. Have kids play some individual games with each other. 2. Stop the games, and go over some of the actual math concepts behind Poker. At this point, the kids are engaged…

While I think the intention and idea is good, you should not teach kids how to play poker. Rather, use a board game with cards and simulate somewhat similar environment but with no inclination towards real gambling whatsoever. Sure, if the "kids" at hand are university students, you could use poker. But I find it extremely dangerous to teach kids poker theory, who as theorized by the Dunning-Kruger effect might start…

That study by Dunning and Kruger did not find that 'Dunning-Kruger effect' that you are citing here. (What they found is that both more and less competent individuals err in their assessment of their own skills towards average competence. The less competent don't give themselves higher marks than the more competent give themselves.)

Btw, the kids who are worse at it would probably get their ass handed to them in the class games already anyway. Even after some training. So that's a good corrective and immediate feedback.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#378

Post by eru »

contravariant wrote: post #307
burntoutfire wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people, poker will probably more likely lead into a gambling addiction (or at least a habit of regularly flushing money down the train at the tables) than an inquiry into probability and statistics. Most people are probably just not inquisitive enough to dig into the maths behind poker.

Poker is a terrible way to learn mathematics but a very useful one to learn about sunk costs.

Why is it terrible?

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#379

Post by eru »

tasogare wrote: post #288
eru wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original Sim City also comes to mind. It teaches a lot, but is still fun.

I spend hundreds of hours on this series (from 2000 to 4) and I love it yet I don’t think I learnt much out of it. "People and companies want low taxes", "nuclear power plant are dangerous" and "wind power is inefficient", that’s pretty much it. Also when I was kind I wasn’t really able to build a good city. I understood years later this is because the game expects cities to be built in the US fashion: big residencia…

Funny enough, the three 'things' you learned out of it ain't even all true. :) Still a great game!

I played mostly Sim City 2000.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#380

Post by eru »

dragonwriter wrote: post #298
tasogare wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend hundreds of hours on this series (from 2000 to 4) and I love it yet I don’t think I learnt much out of it. "People and companies want low taxes", "nuclear power plant are dangerous" and "wind power is inefficient", that’s pretty much it. Also when I was kind I wasn’t really able to build a good city. I understood years later this is because the game expects cities to be built in the US fashion: big residencia…

> Also when I was kind I wasn’t really able to build a good city. I understood years later this is because the game expects cities to be built in the US fashion: big residencial/commercial/industrial zones separated from each other, linked by roads, lot of roads. And square based layouts. It...does not. It uses and underlying low-level simulation model which can be satisfied lots of different ways, but what you descr…

Well, in Sim City you can't mix residential and commercial on the same square. And the bigger buildings need more than a single square, I think.

In real life, I very much like having shops on the ground floor of residential buildings. Very convenient for me.

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