Flickr Image - Sean Dreilinger

An interesting juxtaposition of consecutive articles from BECTA recently. The first questions the effectiveness of those “Brain Training ” games that some people including allegedly Nicole Kidman go doolally over, saying that in one study  there was no significant improvement in performance in areas like memory tests compared to control groups. Given that the sample size was tiny  it’s not going to light a fire under the debate but interesting nonetheless.

The second article on the other hand trumpets the value of gaming in enhancing certain skills. Many games require the development of strategies, problem-solving and increasingly creativity (see games like Spore) plus they are fun.

I did a wee post a while back about using commercial gaming releases as an opportunity for informal learning and this kind of bears that out but it’s most interesting that the games specifically written to enhance learning (or to tap into that particular market) possibly aren’t actually that good at what they claim to do.

Links

Video Games Contribute to Development
The Effects of Brain Training Software and Games

Had a comment from Dan Livingstone at the Learning Games blog (go there now, it’s good!) helpfully directing me to Derek Robertson’s Consolarium pages at Learning and Teaching Scotland.

Cheers Dan.

I’m not being controversial to say that the ability to solve complex problems is much more valuable to a knowledge-based economy/society than knowing a list of facts. Plus it makes for a more fulfilling learning experience.

Now let me relate this to an office conversation we just had about gaming in eductaion.

I’m ambivalent about using games in education. We were part of trial a while back with Immersive Education, testing their new Mission Maker software. It allows children and teachers to create interactive 3d games to explore the method of game design, logical planning etc.

On the whole, a good piece of software but enthusiasm in our schools was not great so we didn’t continue withe the package.

Just too darn complicated for most cross-curricular purposes. 

The aim was also to use it to create learning materials but as an entertaining learning experience you would be competing with the likes of Halo, Quake, Half-Life and the like. The commercial stuff is just soooo far ahead of anything that could be produced for educational purposes in terms of gameplay, narrative and even learning experience (I’m coming on to this…). We did investigate a science game that was a mod (modification) of the Half-Life game. You’re naturally going to compare it to the quality of the original game and it doesn’t come out of it well. 

I think the real power in gaming in education comes from the opportunity for informal learning. You might want to argue that there’s not much educational merit in playing Fable 2 for 4 hours a night or the moot point whether you as a teacher should be encouraging playing violent video games. But there is usually some form of problem solving and strategic thinking involved parallel to blasting seven levels of crap out of zombies. Plus, your students will be playing them anyway!

The trick is to help students to tease out the learning from the experience, help them relate it to situations in the real world. Eventually this will help them grow into autonomous learners. 

And gaming is changing. Traditional shoot-em ups trace their lineage to a time when gamers were almost exclusively male teenagers. The demographic is much more balanced now so there are many more titles that require a larger portion of your brain to succeed.

Sims is a great example although a little retro now.

Spore has created a lot of buzz recently with it’s emphasis on biology, evolution and society.

If you want to go back even further in time check out what Tim Rylands at Chew Magna school has been doing, using the Myst series of interactive puzzlers to enhance children’s descriptive writing skills.

Call of Duty can give a way in to talking about the reality of WW2.

Or look at the Half-Life 2 series of games as a way of exploring dictatorship and oppression in society.

My own personal favourite, though is Portal, a dimension-bending problem solving, first person actioner. It doesn’t require you to kill anyone and it has the blackest sense of humour I’ve ever come across in a game.

If all else fails, try using Grand Theft Auto as a way of examining crime and morality.

In summary, don’t think about a top down approach where the school provides a learning resource and directs students to an outcome. Use what resources the students already have to explore the process of learning and meta-cognition.

PS Apologies if the links to the games sites are block by your ISP at school!