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

[justin-r-swain@att.net]

Game theory is a sub-set of the field of mathematics - a "proper academic
discipline. 
:-) [If its fun it must be bad? . . . I don't agree!]

Design theory may be a topic for another day.
--
Justin-R-Swain@(ahhtaytay).net 
DCTV Producer http://www.dctvonline.org
. . . also  Advocate of Linux, OpenSource and GPL 
> 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'.