The difference between gamification and actual games
So great to see Kathy's work again. Wish she was still blogging...
So great to see Kathy's work again. Wish she was still blogging...
In describing School Shooter, the producer’s site says that “you play as a disgruntled student fed up with something or other (We’re not exactly sure), who after researching multiple school shooting martyrs, decides to become the best school shooter ever.”
Players can arm themselves with the same weapons used by real-life student gunmen, including Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who shot and killed 13 people in April 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado before killing themselves, and Seung-Hui Cho, who fatally shot 32 people at Virginia Tech in April 2007. He also killed himself.
“The possibilities are endless!” the site boasts. “You are free to do whatever you want (So long as it involves shooting people in a school).”
Ms. [Valerie] Shute and other stealth-assessment researchers have turned to video games, which let educators watch students solve complex tasks while immersed in virtual worlds. How students react to new challenges and put evidence together—without the pressure of test proctors breathing down their necks—can reveal a lot about creative problem-solving skills that traditional testing cannot deliver.
Seventy-seven per cent of young people [in Canada] surveyed between the ages of six and 17 reported playing games online, with the majority saying they did so weekly. However, only five per cent of parent gamers said they believed their children accessed online games.
Sitting and listening can be boring. Really boring. Thirteen years of mandatory education, followed, for many, by four or more years of higher education. Then company meetings, professional seminars, continuing education so you can get promoted and go to even more, even longer meetings and seminars. You're getting bored just reading about it, aren't you?
Most people don't give much thought to all the years they spent sitting and listening as children. They're just glad it's over. But if we're trying to educate children who have at their disposal an ever broadening spectrum of consumer technology, even as they contend with ever decreasing attention spans, the time-tested methods are no longer sufficient.
[In video games,] the kid gets to be the star of the story, and it's really tough to compete with that.
the promising use of technology in education is not about creating gimmicky video games or virtual worlds, but about using software and hardware to rethink the business of teaching. In that regard, technology is most effective when it can do one of three things: 1) Replace costly and inefficient activities, such as spending long amounts of time grading multiple choice questions, 2) Make it easier to manage and oversee a class, such as course management software that makes it possible for professors to see which questions students frequently got wrong; or 3) Make students more active and responsible for their learning, such as programs that tailor exercises to areas where students need help and then generate repeated problems so students can keep working on an idea until they really understand it.
Nor is it just the military that is keen to employ consumer technology in sophisticated applications. The Swedish police are already using a virtual autopsy system based on gaming technology to help solve crimes (see box). And Siemens, a German electronics and engineering giant, recently launched an ultrasound scanner which allows expectant mothers to see their unborn child in 3-D. It uses an NVIDIA graphics card and 3-D glasses devised for gaming. Soldiers have also been spotted wearing 3-D glasses, which will add another dimension to modern warfare.
A new study has shown that educational videos and interactive games can have a positive impact on preschooler literacy when incorporated into the curriculum in a classroom setting.
According to the study, released today, children from low-income families whose teachers incorporated digital media (videos, games) in the classroom as part of the Ready to Learn program came out more prepared for kindergarten in terms of literacy skills than those who were not exposed to such a program.
The new study, Summative Evaluation of the Ready to Learn Initiative, was conducted by Education Development Center and SRI International on behalf of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). It focused on economically disadvantaged children in schools participating in Ready to Learn programs in New York and San Francisco. Ready to Learn is an initiative funded in part by the United States Department of Education and is operated by CPB, PBS, and the Ready to Learn Partnership. It's designed to help improve literacy in students aged 2 to 8 using a variety of media tools and curriculum resources.
