Games in Education

David Warlick posted today about a conversation he had with Wesley Smith of iWorlds Simulations. Being an avid gamer and long time theorist on how we learn from games, I was quite interested.

I do believe that we learn from games, simulations, and interactive experiences. I believe that we even learn from music, tv, and radio, probably a lot more than we ever learned from books. But one of the things that I can say without a doubt, is that 99.9% of all "educational" software titles miss the mark.

They fail.

They don't engage children. They don't create compelling immersive environments that catch children's attention. They don't convey the breadth of material that could be conveyed given the bandwidth of the medium. They hardly, if ever, move out of the first or second levels of Bloom's taxonomy.

I know this from my half-hearted research, and the research of others, but mostly from personal experience. Almost every software title that I have had the displeasure of using has some defect or flaw that, in the minds of someone who has knowledge of educational principles, and the power of modern media and interactive experiences, causes the software to be a failure.

The sheer capability of the current crop of gaming rigs (XBOX360, PS3, Wii) is leap years beyond what any educational title is even close to implementing.

Real-time interaction in high definition 3-D virtual environments is here, now on these machines. Just think of the possibilities if a game design studio actually created serious educational content.

Educational software developers have to start playing ball NOW in that arena. Why? Because that is where children are creating their standard for digital media. If we put interactive simulations in front of them that are half-hearted, or lower in production value, many of them will immediately poo-poo it as "soooo... last year"

BUT, there is one way that lower production values can be successful, and that is game-play. Fun games are fun regardless of how good they look. Educational games can be fun if they sneak in the learning, if they work on the game-play first, and then add in the smarts.

Well I have to go eat. More later.