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That may be how you make kids enjoy learning, but edutainment doesn't sell based on fun. It sells based on curriculum. You need to target a specific known stu

by saulpw 5y ago

That may be how you make kids enjoy learning, but edutainment doesn't sell based on fun. It sells based on curriculum. You need to target a specific known study path and be maximally efficient in presenting those concepts and offering a way to grade performance that translates to standardized tests. Anything else is DOA because neither parents nor teachers nor kids will buy it.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
I.e. the educational equivalent of developing to a checklist of features the customer wants, with the customer being a corporate manager that doesn't use the software themselves. We all know how this works: this is how you get garbage software everyone hates but still has to use. > You need to target a specific known study path and be maximally efficient in presenting those concepts and offering a way to grade performance that translates to standardized tests. Yeah, this is exactly what I meant. You do that, it's no longer a game, and kids will hate it. Those concepts are also all related to fitting your product in the education pipeline, which is distinct and mostly opposite to actually teaching things. > Anything else is DOA because neither parents nor teachers nor kids will buy it. Well, of course. Parents and teachers won't buy it because it won't fit the education pipeline, and kids won't want it because it's still labeled as intended for education pipeline. To get to kids, you want something that's an actual videogame first, learning second. As a random example, try Kerbal Space Program - it's absolutely a game first, but it's easier and more fun to play the more you understand the math and engineering of space travel, which is how you end up with 12 years olds learning basics of orbital physics on their own, equations included. Because there suddenly is a point to it. (And I want to reinforce the point about coercion. The simplest way to kill any such product is to get a school to make its use obligatory in a classroom setting. It's the same way as school reading lists kill people's desire to read books in general, and to read specific quality literature in particular.)

by saulpw 5y ago

TeMPOraL 5y ago

I.e. the educational equivalent of developing to a checklist of features the customer wants, with the customer being a corporate manager that doesn't use the software themselves. We all know how this works: this is how you get garbage software everyone hates but still has to use. > You need to target a specific known study path and be maximally efficient in presenting those concepts and offering a way to grade performance that translates to standardized tests. Yeah, this is exactly what I meant. You do that, it's no longer a game, and kids will hate it. Those concepts are also all related to fitting your product in the education pipeline, which is distinct and mostly opposite to actually teaching things. > Anything else is DOA because neither parents nor teachers nor kids will buy it. Well, of course. Parents and teachers won't buy it because it won't fit the education pipeline, and kids won't want it because it's still labeled as intended for education pipeline. To get to kids, you want something that's an actual videogame first, learning second. As a random example, try Kerbal Space Program - it's absolutely a game first, but it's easier and more fun to play the more you understand the math and engineering of space travel, which is how you end up with 12 years olds learning basics of orbital physics on their own, equations included. Because there suddenly is a point to it. (And I want to reinforce the point about coercion. The simplest way to kill any such product is to get a school to make its use obligatory in a classroom setting. It's the same way as school reading lists kill people's desire to read books in general, and to read specific quality literature in particular.)