On the games and education front, I appreciated this reflection from Dan Marchant, a game developer: Department of Education and Skills Game Summit
My personal view is that the government’s best efforts would be directed towards educating publishers/developers on how education department purchasing works (so that they can work out a viable business model) and how to track down educators who can work with them to develop great games that meet a school’s curriculum requirements.
I’d certainly like to be involved in something like that… once I get this dissertation finished. I’m deep in the literature review right now and find about ten post worthy things everytime I sit down to work on it. I did actually type this one up, though, I did a Will Richardson-esque find and replace (“player” for “student” and “learning-world” for “game-world”) on Richard Rouse’s lists of “Why Players Play” and “What Players Expect.” The result is what I consider good food for thought for designers interested in creating educational games – and, as Gee and others would suggest, for teachers preparing classroom learning experiences for their students (I added stars to the ones I’m most passionate about providing):
Why do students learn?
- Students want a challenge
- Students want to socialize
- Students want a dynamic solitary experience
- Students want bragging rights
- Students want an emotional experience*
- Students want to explore*
- Students want to fantasize*
- Students want to interact
What do students expect?
- Students expect a consistent learning-world
- Students expect to understand the learning-world’s bounds
- Students expect reasonable solutions to work
- Students expect direction
- Students expect to accomplish a task incrementally
- Students expect to be immersed
- Students expect some setbacks*
- Students expect a fair chance
- Students expect to not need to repeat themselves
- Students expect to not get hopelessly stuck
- Students expect to do, not to watch (Rouse, 2005, p. 17)
I’d love to hear any reactions to this list in the comments. :)
And a final thought… the video Mike Guerena and I produced continues to have legs. Lately I’m seeing something like a post a week similar to this: Erwin’s Site – Games in Education
Reference:
Rouse, R. (2005). Game Design Theory and Practice. (2nd Ed.) Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing, Inc.