At a recent regional meeting of integration specialists, we went through a brief tutorial of the Mission US 'game' funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Humanities.The goal of Mission US is to take several historical events and create an interactive multimedia experience. Students would go through the simulations and experience the event. Lesson plans would be developed around the events to allow students to reflect and, with any luck, learn about the experience in a different way and think through his/her decisions on a higher level. The first of these games, "For Crown or Colony", is available for use right now and is based in 1770 Boston. I've gone through the simulation and I can see where it would be engaging if used in the right way.
One point to note, though, which leads to a broader thought about educational gaming in general. Even during the tutorial, the instructor noted that the pace of this game might be slower than the students would like to take. She mentioned that the temptation would be for the students to fly through the game and proper planning would be needed to be certain that the students grasped the appropriate concepts.
Is that the right approach? I'll let that question sit for a moment. Here's why ask it. I enjoyed the blog post and following comments on Scott McLeod's 'Dangerously Irrelevant' blog regarding educational games. He compared, for example, graphics on a PBS game to that of something like Madden NFL and asked rhetorically which one kids would gravitate toward. It led to a larger discussion of whether it was fair to measure graphics of 'educational' games with these big-budget entertainment games. Like it or not, those games are our competition for the eyeballs of the children. It isn't too far outside the realm to imagine that any educational gaming experience needs to be entertaining enough to be somewhat competitive with whatever else may be out there.
Back to the 'right' approach for Mission US. I don't pretend to say that playing the game straight through without pausing for reflection is the best method to learn. However, I will say that my own attempt to speed through the game left me wanting to speed through it again and purposely answer questions and confront scenarios in a different manner... just to see how my changes would impact the end result. I would contend that I'd learn something, though it may not be via the traditional learning method.
With entertainment games today, you learn by failing. Using the Madden example, I'll assume that a new player would get crushed by the computerized opponent if playing against them on the highest difficulty level. Some kids choose to start at the hardest level and get beaten repeatedly until they are competitive at that level. Others might choose the easiest level and smash the novice opponent until eventually increasing the difficult due to boredom. Some choose their favorite team, while others would try to win with the worst team or choose to play as the best team against the weakest possible opposition. In every case, you're learning something about the game (and, for that matter, those choices might tell you something about the player as well).
I think we'll see the day where self-directed learning will lead itself toward an educational environment where failure isn't seen as a bad test grade but, rather, as a necessary step to a completed objective. It happens all the time in the gaming world. Heck, when I was cramming for an industry certification, I can recall force-feeding myself sample questions from books and CD's. I missed a TON of prep questions and, along the way, memorized answers to many others in order to get certified. Somewhere in the midst of that, I learned a few things about the concepts that the questions were covering. It may not have been the intended or traditional learning style, but some type of education took place.
What are your thoughts on educational games? Do they have a role in today's classroom and will they (or should they) have a role in tomorrow's classroom?
