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And just to be clear. The answer for children is to make learning to love learning play. And the way to do that in a way that scales is through a video game. Th

And just to be clear. The answer for children is to make learning to love learning play. And the way to do that in a way that scales is through a video game. That is the future of education. Games for children that teach them how to learn, that they then use to set their own educational path. With teachers, schools, mentors, and advisors helping along the way.

tonydiv 11y ago
If you truly believe this, I would love to share what I'm working on with you: http://playlingoland.com http://playlingoland.com We are building a World of Warcraft-esque game for students learning languages, and we have people playing for 3-5 hours upon signing up (we had one student who signed up and played 10 hours within the first 24 hours of signing up). Students absolutely LOVE it. I do believe the future of education is gaming. Unfortunately most of the world believes that it is gamifying things that aren't games inherently. MMORPGs with levels, items, and avatars are games. Flashcards with points are not.
Afton 11y ago
> And the way to do that in a way that scales is through a video game. Well, that's one way. Any teacher who has used word-searches, acting, rhyming games, etc has found other ways. Don't get me wrong, there are a wealth of awesome startups in this space making apps, and I think they have a lot of potential, but they are certainly not the whole story, until we have something out of "The Diamond Age: A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer". Lots of good actual science takes place in the real world, and a video game can certainly be part of the solution, but there's a lot of room for engineering and whatnot that can be part of an autodidactical solution that won't live in an app.
douche 11y ago
I blame video games for making me into a history buff. And maybe Legos, combined with the History Channel before it was the RedneckAliensJesus Channel. Civilization, Lords of the Realm, Caesar II, Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, Close Combat, Total War, Pirates!, Anno 1602, Europa Universalis/Crusader Kings/Victoria/Hearts of Iron, Age of Empires Or to go way back, Math/Word Rescue, Treasure Mountain, Midnight Rescue, Carmen Sandiego, Oregon Trail, the crazy game that was part of Encarta, Dr Brain, Maxis Sim games all taught me math, geography, history, logic, physics, etc.
- yawaramin 11y ago
  Shoutout to the Encarta trivia game with the jester! That was the best.
  - marpstar 11y ago
    Mindmaze!
  - douche 11y ago
    Really a beautiful game, especially to have bundled into an encyclopedia. I'm a little surprised there isn't a version built for Wikipedia... There's this (http://www.wikimaze.me/ http://www.wikimaze.me/) but it's not quite the same
- ashark 11y ago
  Same story, nearly the same list. I'd throw in Shadow President, which taught me the names and locations of all the (cold war era) countries by third grade or so, and gave me a good sense of global and regional balances of power. If you haven't played "Civil War Generals 2: Grant, Lee, Sherman" you should. It's Robert E. Lee: Civil War General but with the brokenness fixed—there's a victory point system that's in part based on locations held, which keeps you from just turtling on the nearest high ground and waiting for the enemy to come into cannon range—and a much larger campaign. It's kind of tricky to run these days, and is a bit unstable even under ideal conditions. Best solution may involve a Win98se VM. :-/ The Encarta game was awesome. I'd forgotten about it. Thanks for the memory.
  - douche 11y ago
    CWG2 was fantastic. I scoured bargain bins high and low for a couple of years before I found a copy. Lord knows how many hours I lost refighting Gettysburg or marathon custom scenarios on the ridiculously big Manassas, Harper's Ferry and Cross Keys/Port Republic maps. It's too bad it wasn't more popular; I'd have loved to see a Napoleonic or Franco-Prussian expansion. I remember a couple of total conversion mods that sort of worked, but it was not a particularly mod-friendly game, unfortunately. Too bad that the only real option to play it these days is still 800x600 on a Win98 VM. If GOG ever offers a version that works on modern operating systems, it will be a "Shut up and take my money" moment for me. Someday, I want to build a medieval/ancient set game with the same general mechanics...
TeMPOraL 11y ago
They'll screw it up anyway. I believe the core issue is just about agency: kids will enjoy and learn from anything and everything if they don't feel forced to do so. The best way to absolutely ruin a book? Make it a required reading in school. The best way to make a totally crap game that is neither fun nor educating? Make an educational game. If you want to kids to learn and have fun at the same time, you have to accept the model of "entertainment first, education incidental" as opposed to "education in game's clothes". But that's hard to do because people assume, probably based on their own experience in the crappy school system, that learning must be about hard work. Yes, learning involves a lot of work, but it's not hard if you find it fun.
- agarden 11y ago
  I wonder if perhaps kids find the assigned work so dreadful because the manner of assignment assumes it will be. "Why should I read this?," asks the kid. "Because it is assigned," comes the answer. At which point, perhaps the child thinks, "Oh, you don't care about this, so why should I?," and the battle lines are drawn. In other words, maybe the issue isn't whether or not something is assigned. Maybe the issue is whether or not the teacher cares about - and is excited about - the material. If the teacher thinks it is fun, maybe being assigned it is not such a heavy burden to bear.
- fsloth 11y ago
  "The best way to make a totally crap game that is neither fun nor educating? Make an educational game." My 5 y. daughter is completely enthralled by a spelling and reading game on IPad. This leads me to disagree and claim instead that a crap game is not made good by educational goals but a good educational game is provably plausible - it just needs to be a good game.
  - Latty 11y ago
    It's about making a game that is educational, rather than an education tool that's a game. The vast majority of 'education games' are simple quizzes, barely even a game. One of my favourite childhood games (Logical Journey of the Zoombinis) was all about maths, logic and problem solving, and I credit it for a lot of my early interest (and success) in those areas. As a quick plug for something I loved - they recently kickstarted a remake http://www.zoombinis.com/ http://www.zoombinis.com/ - I'd highly recommend it. (Not involved, besides backing the kickstarter).
jimktrains2 11y ago
I disagree. My friends and I played video games for fun. We learned by having "cool" ideas and trying to solve them. This is how you get freshmen learning, nearly deriving, some very basic calculus and juniors doing basic ODEs, not to mention programming to solve things like building a website to allow users to submit and edit content, converse with each other, and search the content. TF-IDF isn't complicated, and almost naturally gets derived when you start to think about "what can I do to make this search better than LIKE '%term%'?" Games can definitely help with strategical thinking, "people skills", and even learning, but to say they're the future is misguided. Supporting children who have interests is the way I think is best followed, and that can be incredibly resource intensive.
Rayearth 11y ago
I've come across two outstanding examples of this: Kerbal Space Program in AP Physics (https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1jcnyl/when_ksp_is_used_in_an_ap_physics_classroom/ https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1jcnyl/...) Diplomacy [the Avalon Hill boardgame] in 12th Grade Humanities (https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/386460/diplomacy-classroom-massive-report-pics-video-refl https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/386460/diplomacy-classroom-...) The second example is particularly fascinating. We can expect games to apply and reinforce studies in a technical field or to stimulate interest in history, but using a game to teach rhetoric and its ability to express and manipulate is something else.
analog31 11y ago
My observation as a parent of two kids: I think that homework is already moving in that direction. An increasing amount of homework is done at the computer -- hours and hours of it. Unfortunately, the stuff that's designed for education is Lame -- intellectually superficial, and boring for the kids -- and they know it. The companies that make that stuff are politically connected and mainly good at selling to school administrators. It's been this way since the birth of the educational software industry. Now I admit that I've never played video games, but I can't imagine creating an artificial learning environment that's as rich as going outside to play, making things, or writing code.

tonydiv 11y ago

If you truly believe this, I would love to share what I'm working on with you: http://playlingoland.com http://playlingoland.com We are building a World of Warcraft-esque game for students learning languages, and we have people playing for 3-5 hours upon signing up (we had one student who signed up and played 10 hours within the first 24 hours of signing up). Students absolutely LOVE it. I do believe the future of education is gaming. Unfortunately most of the world believes that it is gamifying things that aren't games inherently. MMORPGs with levels, items, and avatars are games. Flashcards with points are not.

Afton 11y ago

> And the way to do that in a way that scales is through a video game. Well, that's one way. Any teacher who has used word-searches, acting, rhyming games, etc has found other ways. Don't get me wrong, there are a wealth of awesome startups in this space making apps, and I think they have a lot of potential, but they are certainly not the whole story, until we have something out of "The Diamond Age: A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer". Lots of good actual science takes place in the real world, and a video game can certainly be part of the solution, but there's a lot of room for engineering and whatnot that can be part of an autodidactical solution that won't live in an app.

douche 11y ago

I blame video games for making me into a history buff. And maybe Legos, combined with the History Channel before it was the RedneckAliensJesus Channel. Civilization, Lords of the Realm, Caesar II, Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, Close Combat, Total War, Pirates!, Anno 1602, Europa Universalis/Crusader Kings/Victoria/Hearts of Iron, Age of Empires Or to go way back, Math/Word Rescue, Treasure Mountain, Midnight Rescue, Carmen Sandiego, Oregon Trail, the crazy game that was part of Encarta, Dr Brain, Maxis Sim games all taught me math, geography, history, logic, physics, etc.

yawaramin 11y ago
Shoutout to the Encarta trivia game with the jester! That was the best.
- marpstar 11y ago
  Mindmaze!
- douche 11y ago
  Really a beautiful game, especially to have bundled into an encyclopedia. I'm a little surprised there isn't a version built for Wikipedia... There's this (http://www.wikimaze.me/ http://www.wikimaze.me/) but it's not quite the same
ashark 11y ago
Same story, nearly the same list. I'd throw in Shadow President, which taught me the names and locations of all the (cold war era) countries by third grade or so, and gave me a good sense of global and regional balances of power. If you haven't played "Civil War Generals 2: Grant, Lee, Sherman" you should. It's Robert E. Lee: Civil War General but with the brokenness fixed—there's a victory point system that's in part based on locations held, which keeps you from just turtling on the nearest high ground and waiting for the enemy to come into cannon range—and a much larger campaign. It's kind of tricky to run these days, and is a bit unstable even under ideal conditions. Best solution may involve a Win98se VM. :-/ The Encarta game was awesome. I'd forgotten about it. Thanks for the memory.
- douche 11y ago
  CWG2 was fantastic. I scoured bargain bins high and low for a couple of years before I found a copy. Lord knows how many hours I lost refighting Gettysburg or marathon custom scenarios on the ridiculously big Manassas, Harper's Ferry and Cross Keys/Port Republic maps. It's too bad it wasn't more popular; I'd have loved to see a Napoleonic or Franco-Prussian expansion. I remember a couple of total conversion mods that sort of worked, but it was not a particularly mod-friendly game, unfortunately. Too bad that the only real option to play it these days is still 800x600 on a Win98 VM. If GOG ever offers a version that works on modern operating systems, it will be a "Shut up and take my money" moment for me. Someday, I want to build a medieval/ancient set game with the same general mechanics...

TeMPOraL 11y ago

They'll screw it up anyway. I believe the core issue is just about agency: kids will enjoy and learn from anything and everything if they don't feel forced to do so. The best way to absolutely ruin a book? Make it a required reading in school. The best way to make a totally crap game that is neither fun nor educating? Make an educational game. If you want to kids to learn and have fun at the same time, you have to accept the model of "entertainment first, education incidental" as opposed to "education in game's clothes". But that's hard to do because people assume, probably based on their own experience in the crappy school system, that learning must be about hard work. Yes, learning involves a lot of work, but it's not hard if you find it fun.

agarden 11y ago
I wonder if perhaps kids find the assigned work so dreadful because the manner of assignment assumes it will be. "Why should I read this?," asks the kid. "Because it is assigned," comes the answer. At which point, perhaps the child thinks, "Oh, you don't care about this, so why should I?," and the battle lines are drawn. In other words, maybe the issue isn't whether or not something is assigned. Maybe the issue is whether or not the teacher cares about - and is excited about - the material. If the teacher thinks it is fun, maybe being assigned it is not such a heavy burden to bear.
fsloth 11y ago
"The best way to make a totally crap game that is neither fun nor educating? Make an educational game." My 5 y. daughter is completely enthralled by a spelling and reading game on IPad. This leads me to disagree and claim instead that a crap game is not made good by educational goals but a good educational game is provably plausible - it just needs to be a good game.
- Latty 11y ago
  It's about making a game that is educational, rather than an education tool that's a game. The vast majority of 'education games' are simple quizzes, barely even a game. One of my favourite childhood games (Logical Journey of the Zoombinis) was all about maths, logic and problem solving, and I credit it for a lot of my early interest (and success) in those areas. As a quick plug for something I loved - they recently kickstarted a remake http://www.zoombinis.com/ http://www.zoombinis.com/ - I'd highly recommend it. (Not involved, besides backing the kickstarter).

jimktrains2 11y ago

I disagree. My friends and I played video games for fun. We learned by having "cool" ideas and trying to solve them. This is how you get freshmen learning, nearly deriving, some very basic calculus and juniors doing basic ODEs, not to mention programming to solve things like building a website to allow users to submit and edit content, converse with each other, and search the content. TF-IDF isn't complicated, and almost naturally gets derived when you start to think about "what can I do to make this search better than LIKE '%term%'?" Games can definitely help with strategical thinking, "people skills", and even learning, but to say they're the future is misguided. Supporting children who have interests is the way I think is best followed, and that can be incredibly resource intensive.

Rayearth 11y ago

I've come across two outstanding examples of this: Kerbal Space Program in AP Physics (https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1jcnyl/when_ksp_is_used_in_an_ap_physics_classroom/ https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1jcnyl/...) Diplomacy [the Avalon Hill boardgame] in 12th Grade Humanities (https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/386460/diplomacy-classroom-massive-report-pics-video-refl https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/386460/diplomacy-classroom-...) The second example is particularly fascinating. We can expect games to apply and reinforce studies in a technical field or to stimulate interest in history, but using a game to teach rhetoric and its ability to express and manipulate is something else.

analog31 11y ago

My observation as a parent of two kids: I think that homework is already moving in that direction. An increasing amount of homework is done at the computer -- hours and hours of it. Unfortunately, the stuff that's designed for education is Lame -- intellectually superficial, and boring for the kids -- and they know it. The companies that make that stuff are politically connected and mainly good at selling to school administrators. It's been this way since the birth of the educational software industry. Now I admit that I've never played video games, but I can't imagine creating an artificial learning environment that's as rich as going outside to play, making things, or writing code.