Session on Video Games (Via 2 Cents Worth.) David Warlick is writing about video games in education again, and he is beginning to discover some of the things I’ve spent the last two years learning about, including Jim Gee’s work on video games and learning. It continues to be exciting to see one of the (well-read) leaders in educational technology give some thought to the potential of video games in education.
Terry Freedman also picked up Warlick’s post and ran with it (attributing a quote to Warlick that I know I’ve seen elsewhere first) over at The Educational Technology Site: ICT in Education: –> Beyond Games. Freedman says he “could teach at least half the Economics syllabus through Sim City, if the school could have afforded the licence fees.” He also recalled the use of “a game called Running the British Economy” with his students back in 1978. His reflections conclude with the realization that “the real power of games in an educational context lies in taking the lid off to see what makes them tick, and using them out of context.”
Meanwhile, I should mention that long-time video games in education enthusiast Bill Mackenty has posted a brief excerpt about using the new game Spore in education from an article by Wil Wright, the games’ creator, in NYT Magazine: Spore in the NYT”