[school-discuss] Thinking through games (thanks to Dr Anil Seth for this link) (fwd)

["Frederick Noronha (FN)" <fred@bytesforall.org>]

Does GNU/Linux have something to learn from this? FN
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---------- Forwarded message ----------

URL:  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/view.html

   High Score Education

   Games, not school, are teaching kids to think.

   By James Paul Gee


   Scott Menchin
   The US spends almost $50 billion each year on education, so why aren't
   kids learning? Forty percent of students lack basic reading skills,
   and their academic performance is dismal compared with that of their
   foreign counterparts. In response to this crisis, schools are
   skilling-and-drilling their way "back to basics," moving toward
   mechanical instruction methods that rely on line-by-line scripting for
   teachers and endless multiple-choice testing. Consequently, kids
   aren't learning how to think anymore - they're learning how to
   memorize. This might be an ideal recipe for the future Babbitts of the
   world, but it won't produce the kind of agile, analytical minds that
   will lead the high tech global age. Fortunately, we've got Grand Theft
   Auto: Vice City and Deus X for that.

   After school, kids are devouring new information, concepts, and skills
   every day, and, like it or not, they're doing it controller in hand,
   plastered to the TV. The fact is, when kids play videogames they can
   experience a much more powerful form of learning than when they're in
   the classroom. Learning isn't about memorizing isolated facts. It's
   about connecting and manipulating them. Doubt it? Just ask anyone
   who's beaten Legend of Zelda or solved Morrowind.

   The phenomenon of the videogame as an agent of mental training is
   largely unstudied; more often, games are denigrated for being violent
   or they're just plain ignored. They shouldn't be. Young gamers today
   aren't training to be gun-toting carjackers. They're learning how to
   learn. In Pikmin, children manage an army of plantlike aliens and
   strategize to solve problems. In Metal Gear Solid 2, players move
   stealthily through virtual environments and carry out intricate
   missions. Even in the notorious Vice City, players craft a persona,
   build a history, and shape a virtual world. In strategy games like
   WarCraft III and Age of Mythology, they learn to micromanage an array
   of elements while simultaneously balancing short- and long-term goals.
   That sounds like something for their résumés.

   The secret of a videogame as a teaching machine isn't its immersive
   3-D graphics, but its underlying architecture. Each level dances
   around the outer limits of the player's abilities, seeking at every
   point to be hard enough to be just doable. In cognitive science, this
   is referred to as the regime of competence principle, which results in
   a feeling of simultaneous pleasure and frustration - a sensation as
   familiar to gamers as sore thumbs. Cognitive scientist Andy diSessa
   has argued that the best instruction hovers at the boundary of a
   student's competence. Most schools, however, seek to avoid invoking
   feelings of both pleasure and frustration, blind to the fact that
   these emotions can be extremely useful when it comes to teaching kids.

   Also, good videogames incorporate the principle of expertise. They
   tend to encourage players to achieve total mastery of one level, only
   to challenge and undo that mastery in the next, forcing kids to adapt
   and evolve. This carefully choreographed dialectic has been identified
   by learning theorists as the best way to achieve expertise in any
   field. This doesn't happen much in our routine-driven schools, where
   "good" students are often just good at "doing school."

   How did videogames become such successful models of effective
   learning? Game coders aren't trained as cognitive scientists. It's a
   simple case of free-market economics: If a title doesn't teach players
   how to play it well, it won't sell well. Game companies don't rake in
   $6.9 billion a year by dumbing down the material - aficionados condemn
   short and easy games like Half Life: Blue Shift and Devil May Cry 2.
   Designers respond by making harder and more complex games that require
   mastery of sophisticated worlds and as many as 50 to 100 hours to
   complete. Schools, meanwhile, respond with more tests, more drills,
   and more rigidity. They're in the cognitive-science dark ages.

   We don't often think about videogames as relevant to education reform,
   but maybe we should. Game designers don't often think of themselves as
   learning theorists. Maybe they should. Kids often say it doesn't feel
   like learning when they're gaming - they're much too focused on
   playing. If kids were to say that about a science lesson, our
   country's education problems would be solved.
     _________________________________________________________________

   James Paul Gee, a reading professor at the University of
   Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of 'What Video Games Have to Teach Us
   About Learning and Literacy'.