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Video Games Are the Future of Education

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Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#381

Post by gfodor »

tchaffee wrote: post #350
gfodor wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “most” I was referring to wasn’t the most of all parents, but of people who you say should just go out and start a new school system. It seems somewhat self evident that the people who are homeschooling their kids have some % that do so because they see the school system as a failure. The point is if you’ve flipped the bozo bit on public schools, the next fix is go to a private one, and the next is to homeschool,…

> It seems somewhat self evident that the people who are homeschooling their kids have some % that do so because they see the school system as a failure Sure, I'll go with that. So we've got some percentage of 3% who see the school system as a failure. That's a tiny percentage. This is why data is important. I'll even agree that the real percentage of parents or graduates who think the school system is a failure is m…

I like the work of Papert, Montessori, Egan, and also like what Alan Kay has to say. Very little of their analysis is data driven, but based upon anecdotal experience with students. I don’t think the lack of rigorous use of data undermines their analysis and contributions. I also don’t think one needs to start a company in education or teach in the existing model to be able to contribute ideas and have opinions on the subject. Education is a life long endeavor, and so is teaching and mentoring. If you have raised children, for example, you’re qualified in my opinion to have your views taken seriously. I also have had a failed startup in the edu space and I consider my experiences trying to learn and teach others informally to be more useful towards having an opinion about modern schooling.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#382

Post by Rarok »

bananamerica wrote: post #222
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…

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.

Same here, fun fact is that even at school and high school I was the only boy that could understand a basic text or do a basic conversation but even with that I always had troubles just to pass any test.

Learned English playing games in the early 90's

In any English test they ask me to put a phrase in passive form and I was like: the f* is that?

And most probably for maths/physics It would be funnier to do some angry birds with numbers than calculating the movement of a random body in a parabolic movement.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#383

Post by llarsson »

hhs wrote: post #358
llarsson wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely must be, because they have even vegan options here and there. Sweden, for instance, has had vegan burgers for several years (first McBean and now McVegan). I know other countries have something similar. It seems to me that US McDonald's must be scared of diluting their brand by also going after the veggie crowd. Perhaps due to McLean failing or that they just bide their time until they can make a whole…

> or that they just bide their time until they can make a whole new set of restaurants under a different brand name like McDonald's Green or something? Would be fascinating if they did something like that. Pret a Manger did this recently by adding stores called Veggie Pret. Might be tough for McDonald’s to pull that off, though, since they also cater a lot to kids. By introducing two stores, veggie vs non-veggie, won…

Well, they do have McCafé, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCafé

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#384

Post by contravariant »

eru wrote: post #378
contravariant wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why is it terrible?

Of all the things that matter in poker knowing the exact probabilities is not all that important.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#385

Post by stared »

mcv wrote: post #212
shafyy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "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…

You can make a game about vim keybindings (https://vim-adventures.com/). If that's possible sky's the limit!

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#386

Post by redbar0n »

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 :(

Why do you think it has failed?

I rather agree with the quoted statement. I think that, if it is truly that simple fact which has failed, then it is because 'their goals' are in fact put upon them, not innately 'their goals'.* Students will of course not innately want to learn whatever they need to know to pass the exam. But they want to learn whatever they need to know to beat their friends in Fortnite.

I think more generally the problem is that pedagogy, as in _instruction_, is fundamentally at odds with _agency_ (which is what games excel at giving people). (Imagine playing a game that would explain to you how to play it at every step of the way. How fun would that be?) It's comes down to control. Who should have it: the teacher, or the student? No classroom setting would ever allow giving _all control_ over to students. Yet, that is what games do. And the wonders that it creates.. The control gives players a really _empowering_ feeling of agency and self-determination. Pedagogy, and instruction, is often more paternalistic / patronizing in its core, since it assumes "You can't do this, let me show you". Games say: "Let's see if you can do this!"

* - Education is a way of enforcing society's goals upon the individual (to create "citizens", ideally, but to create "workers", practically), and the individual adapts to it to the extent it helps him later in life, to the level he/she has aspirations and manages to forgo instant gratification.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#387

Post by redbar0n »

manofstick wrote: post #162
jay_kyburz wrote: post #122

I'm a game developer who just finished a few months of home schooling 2 kids, and I agree that games are the future of Education, but not for the same reason as the author. 1. I think we'll eventually have software manage the progress of our children as they learn. It will present new ideas when they are ready for them, and test that old ideas stay fresh in memory. Software can do a better job than a teacher can, bec…

> It was never fun to grind through killing 100 Goblins, but you did it so that you could get the magic sword at the end. I think you're taking exactly the wrong lesson from that. It wasn't fun to grind through the goblins, but it wasn't challenging either. You did it because you could turn your brain off. I opine that if it did require thinking then the world would now be overrun with goblins...

I think he took the right lesson in that case. I at least did it for the rewards. I for one don't do tedious and mind-numbing tasks, that involve serious involvement over time, just to turn my brain off. I might do the dishes, but that is very time constrained, and not something I repeatedly come back to doing unless I have to.

On the contrary, games usually inspire work by precisely _being challenging_. That's what normally keeps people coming back to play them for their own sake (the autotelicity of games).

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#388

Post by VSerge »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #329
VSerge wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've seen first hand how well it works in a study with 40k kids in the US, Norway, and France. The study was led by the Center for Game Science, Washington University.

Paper: Zoran Popović. Achieving 96% Mastery at National Scale through Inspired Learning and Generative Adaptivity. Proceedings of the Second (2015) ACM Conference on Learning@ Scale, 2015. http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=2724684&ftid=1550376&dwn...

Post-test success as used in the paper you mentioned can be a misleading indicator if transfer to pen and paper was done improperly. As kids solving equations in a game are moving terms around by touch on a screen, they need to transfer that learning to pen and paper before being able to write a line by line solution. Failing to do this transfer would predictably lead to a poor post-test performance, without actually measuring properly how much algebra had been learned and understood.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#389

Post by hamilyon2 »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #329
VSerge wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, it is not In my experience. Sample size of 1, though.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#390

Post by [deleted] »

mettamage wrote: post #31
adrianhon wrote: post #5

The author claims “where games mostly fall short is that they’re not that transferable to the real world. The skills you learn are highly specific to that game,” but “this will change,” because the cost of game development is decreasing. But his conclusion doesn’t follow; we might get more educational games, but not necessarily ones with skills that are more generalisable. As someone who’s spent the last 15 years mak…

@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…

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