We came across new posts and discussion about video gaming and education. Where do you stand? Here are some first thoughts...
The Pros:
- highly motivating, it's fun (fun is very important - we don't underestimate it!)
- encourages risk taking and trial and error
- self-paced
- young-age friendly...young kids can begin to work with complex situations or ideas
- encourages analysis and looking for mistakes
- can incorporate or train different learning strategies- though at present visual-heavy (pictures, images, text)
- can hint without telling
- can be very patient
- solve by ideas, not strength or size (great for young gifted kids or 2E's)
- encourages perspective changing
- encourages some problem solving (though not as much as we'd like for K-12)
- allows incremental learning, close monitoring of improvement or training
- allows precisely targeted sensory / perceptual learning (auditory / visual processing)
The Cons:
- it's not real- may impact on how the information is generalized, taken seriously
-
the process is immersive and usually fairly fast-paced (may not be as
conducive to reflection compared to other learning formats such as
reading)
- doesn't encourage as much critique about the information
as maybe reading original documents, magazine, or book...after all,
it's just a game
- game play doesn't directly examine reality
-
players are directed to the programmer's teaching points or
conclusions- whereas direct inspection of real experiments or phenomena
may provide more individual learning points or conclusions.
- the
games could be administered poorly...teacher leaves students to
computer terminals, student doesn't learn anything, copies from
neighbor, etc. (this can happen in labs too, of course)
-games are
interactive, but not as interactive as conversation with a smart and
perceptive teacher (remember the Turing test?)...some programs are
completed by kids clicking a lot or cheating
-not hands-on learning
(click or toggle rather than working with original materials)...miss
making projects by hands, spatial learning and modeling
Some of
the ideas about gaming in medicine - reminded us a bit of the 'Virtual
Patient' programs that we tried out for the University of Pennsylvania
years ago. These programs were decision-based flow programs, that drove
you to a particular diagnosis or cluster of diagnoses...but very
different from real patients. There are a million different ways people
will tell you something (or not tell you something), and the computer
model was nothing like taking a history from a real patient, sorting
out facts from conflicting office notes or lab studies. Even the most
complex games involve the abstraction of a great deal of information,
and many decisions about what to include or exclude for a game. Now,
selection and abstraction takes place in every lesson or learning plan
we know, but what direct labs or experimentation? Which sort of format
would you be more likely to have an unexpected result- a 4th grade
science experiment or a video game teaching the same principle? Now
some might prefer that you don't ever get an unexpected result - but
which is more like life?
So where do we stand? Gaming has a
wonderful potential in education and rehabilitation for that matter -
but in our household, we like pairing computer-based learning with
one-on-one old-fashioned Socratic thinking and hands-on study. We don't
use games only for educational purposes (shouldn't life be fun?), but
if our kids develop an insane delight in 'arcade games' over and over
again, we have insisted they learn about what makes a good game, and
try some simple programming themselves.
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