click here for complete list). Cory agrees, underscoring that this learning is not invisible to the game players.
A winning interface, say the panelists, hinges on the freedom to build an identity, to participate in a community, and to be a producer rather than a powerless consumer. It is also extremely helpful if games provide information the player needs "just in time," so that there is an immediately usable context and limited delays. Writes Gee:
I have argued elsewhere, like a good many others, that one of the troubles with schools is that in school, we try to give people lots of verbal information outside of any context of application and long before such information can be put to any use. Humans deal very poorly with such information & Games realize this and offer information "on demand" and "just in time."
Identity
While games typically have better graphics than educational software titles, such "eye candy"--to use Gee's term--is not essential. Writes Gee, "The power ultimately resides in good design, the sort of design that allows the player to coconstruct a meaningful new world through his or her own decisions and activities and, in the act, work out a new identity that contributes to an enhanced sense of self."
It seems as though an engaging interface has a rather biblical need for free will. Writes Prensky, "Games teach kids to choose wisely by making the consequences meaningfully bad to them if they don't, and giving them a chance to try again and again until they 'get it' and do." Gee writes:
A game that is about content in the way textbooks are about content would be deadly. In my view, it would be a gross misuse of game technologies, sure to turn students off in the way in which textbooks do. Good games--and this will be truer in the future as we get games like Deus Ex 2--are not about content first; rather, they are about YOU, the player, or you and your friends first and content later. They offer you a world that you can help shape and in which you can realize goals and desires within a new identity that allows you to take risks and do things you might not do or be able to do in the real world. We should design knowledge-laden games--rich with guidance and help and clear, too, about what other people, even the designers, believe, value, and think--but then, we should turn the player free. If the freedom is gone, if the game is not open ended, it will just be school again.
Such freedom over identity and other aspects of the game allows the game to be played in many different ways. Says Gee:
. . . as we think about the connection between games and schools, we probably need to think of games as not just a general category but an array of specifically different things with different affordances taken up by different people in different ways. Games as a whole landscape speak powerfully to different economies of pleasure, different interests, different talents, and different kinds of people as individuals and as social beings.
Girls and Games
This spectrum of interests and offerings begs the issue of whether learning via a game is desirable to girls. Dede writes, "Although an increasing number of girls play video games as children and later on as adults, many give up their game controllers during their adolescent years, years that are critical in terms of both identity formation and attitudes toward technology and career (Cassell & Jenkins, 1998)." He also quotes a recent report by the AAUW: "Girls find programming classes tedious and dull; computer games too boring, redundant, and violent; and computer career options uninspiring. Girls have clear and strong ideas about what kinds of games they would design: games that feature simulation, strategy, and interaction. These games, in fact, would appeal to a broad range of learners--boys and girls alike."
Paying close attention to the issue, Dede has designed content and avatars for both genders, and has found girls enjoy the River City learning space. "I think the fundamental issue in potential gender bias for MUVES is not the medium itself," writes Dede, "but the types of content/process its designers infuse."
Speaking on an issue other than girl gamers, but making a comment that is none-the-less relevant, Prensky writes, "I'm afraid that even if Electronic Arts, or Sony, or Nintendo decided today that they were going to produce titles that both taught material and entertained, for much of the curriculum-based stuff we want kids to learn, it still wouldn't happen. That's because we don't yet know how to design the games and software when we're not teaching war, fighting, or sports, but rather things that involve more thinking than doing."
Community and Collaboration
Community within and outside the game, agree the panelists, is an essential contributor to engagement. In reference to the many venues to discuss or learn more about a game--or even a book like Harry Potter, (click here for fan sites for that series), Dede writes, "While many video games are mindless and some even pathological, well-constructed games that enable multiplayer interaction and collaborative evolution (e.g., Sid Meyer's Civilization series http://www.civ2.com/) illustrate the evolution of similar communities of practice." Gamers not only share enthusiasm and strategy, they create extensions of the game and methods to change the games codes.
The observations have application beyond software design. In his book, Gee points out that students in a science class should be trying on the identity of a scientist, and the classroom should offer the kind of community of practice a scientist would work in. Writes Gee:
Any academic area of study--like biology or history--can be viewed in one of two ways. One way is to see it as a set of facts and principles, as "content." Another way is to see it as a set of activities and values, that is, as a set of characteristic ways in which to think, act, and value in regard to the world. . .
Video games [by "video games" I mean both computer games and games on game stations] can be a good way to teach either content or being/doing, but I believe their true power is in the latter realm. Here they have massive amounts to teach us. They have, as well, a real potential for radically transforming learning and education.
As handhelds and text/image-capable cell phones evolve, involvement with other people may be far more important than graphics. A box with eyes may be deeply compelling in a high-tech hide-and-seek game. Writes Prensky, "Small implies always with you, always on, always ready. My sense is that in a school and Digital Native environment, size trumps just about anything else, especially if the device is extensible."
Producers and Consumers
Through such communities of practice, gamers become producers as well as consumers. From observations of seven-year-olds playing The Age of Mythology, Gee writes:
One crucial feature, too, is the kids see themselves as producers and not just consumers. They use the editors that come with the game to make up their own scenarios. They use the cheats in entirely interesting and novel ways as elements of game play. They freely relate AoM to a great many other things [Gee previously identified library books and other resources]. Indeed, I think the fact that games allow and encourage people to be producers and agents, and not just consumers, is part of their most powerful potential to change the world.
This desire to create is fortunate, says Prensky, because "Digital Immigrants" cannot design for the "Natives." "Our kids have discovered, in the digital technology, a new, incredibly powerful tool, and they are making the most of it, using it in ways we can't even imagine. In this period of radical new technology and invention, the kids have to figure out the best designs for learning and school for themselves, not us for them."
School Reform
Prensky writes of the disintermediation of teachers, saying, "In the simplest terms, it means our need for teachers is going away." He later writes, "The reason we will not need teachers is that more and more, through these types of activities, our kids are learning to teach themselves."
Discussions of the potential of technology often highlight shortcomings in the way we "do school." Seymour Papert, for example, in a Soapbox panel on the constructivist software struggle, wrote:
. . . the power of the technology cannot be recognized as long as we think in a framework of accepting school as it is (e.g., the content of the curriculum, the idea of age segregation, the testing philosophy, etc.) I would feel that this way of thinking is defeatist, except that I also see signs that school in its traditional form is crumbling."
In a similar frame of mind, Gee writes:
When people discuss schools in relation to video games or e-learning, they often assume that schools can or will stay pretty much as they are. Games and e-learning will "supplement" but not transform what is already there. The traditional "grammar" [structure] of schooling co-opts the new technology, taming it and using it only to reproduce traditional schooling. . . .
When you look at AoM not as just a game but a whole landscape made up of the game, extensions, one's friends who are into the game, Web sites, books and guides, chat rooms, and links to a great deal related to mythology, you see a landscape with all the features of what my vision for learning in the future would be.
Such landscapes, which are not really "communities," will, in the future, create more and more the new geography of learning. Schools may just wither away, at least as stand-alone institutions. Or, in a worse vision, the poor will go to school to get the "basics," and the rich will pay to enter the rich geography of the future. . . . Or, better, schools will break down their walls and "classes" and become one landscape linked to many others in the new geography of learning.
Dede, though absolutely willing to challenge long-held assumptions, aims for a game that can plug and play in schools as we know them:
The underlying theme about the evolution of teaching, learning, and schooling implied in this vision is to use interactive media--including gaming--as powerful vehicles for motivation, information, and experience outside of school settings. Classroom interactions can then focus on interpretation guided by a skilled teacher--the rich exchange of perspectives that helps convert motivation, information, and experience into individual and collective knowledge.
Now Where? The Economics
Dede identifies the challenges of a traditional business model for educational products: "cautious decision making, long buying cycles, disaggregated market, deeply entrenched competitors." He concludes:
In the foreseeable future, I find it hard to imagine a company sustaining its educational MUVEs through school purchasing.
The home market for educational toys, materials, and services--while tough--is less daunting. . . .
Or possibly the cost of edutainment is borne by a vendor. Companies such as Nintendo may shift more towards services than products ("Buy a supercharged iGameBoy and, for $XX a month, you get unlimited access to multiplayer online gaming. And yes, Mom and Dad, some of these games are edutainment.") Such MUVEs would be seen as financially losing propositions by their sponsors, but good for public relations and possibly for marketing.
"I really think that 'leaving it to the marketplace' to do the innovation for education won't work," writes Prensky. He is a strong believer in the power of the collective "hive mind" to create a good learning game when an appropriate genius is not available (a scenario necessarily paired with open source code). He writes:
I strongly believe that if someone were to set up and maintain a Web site around any curricular topic--say high school chemistry and physics--and invite every student, grad student, and teacher in the world to invent and design possible interactions, "levels," and gameplay for a game to teach that subject, we would get something extraordinary.
My view of a useful business model in education is not "a way to make money." It is rather a way for all the people in the supply chain to be motivated to continuously innovate and produce results that help improve the education of our kids.
Anyone motivated to host school as a multiuser game, speak now. Indeed, all thoughts related to the topic are welcome on the discussion board, and many more important thoughts can be found in the full transcript of the panel discussion.
Sites and Resources Mentioned in the Discussion
Dr. Christopher Dede's multiuser environment: www.gse.harvard.edu/~dedech/muvees/
Marc Prensky's writings: www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp
Work with Games in Education
King, Brad. "Educators Turn to Games for Help." Wired News, August 2003. A Wired magazine article on the topic: www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,59855,00.html
Work on games in school from the UK: British Educational Communications and Technology Agency: www.becta.org.uk; Teachers Evaluating Educational Multimedia (TEEM): www.teem.org.uk
Personal-digital-assistant-based learning tools (PDA Participatory Simulations) for the Palm OS or Pocket PC handheld computers created by Eric Klopfer and Kurt Squire at MIT as part of their Microsoft-funded Games to Teach initiative: http://education.mit.edu/pda
MOBIlearn, a worldwide European-led research and development project exploring context-sensitive approaches to informal, problem-based, and workplace learning by using key advances in mobile technologies: www.mobilearn.org
A possible authoring environment for games and free offering created by Alan Kay: www.squeakland.org
"Teacher's Guides" for games from Lucas Learning: www.lucaslearning.com/edu/lesson.htm
Harry Potter fan sites that exemplify "a healthy and vibrant community of practice": MuggleNet (www.MuggleNet.com), Fiction Alley (www.fictionalley.org), and The Wizard World (www.thewizardworld.com) (no longer available)
Some of the Games from the Discussion
Sid Meyer's Civilization series: www.civ2.com/
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Vice City
Grand Theft Auto III
Deus Ex 2
Pokemon
A database of cell phone games: www.wgamer.com/gamedir/
Miscellaneous Resources
Vignettes about the Future of Learning Technologies as an Adobe PDF file. 2020 VISIONS: Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 2002. www.ta.doc.gov/reports/TechPolicy/2020Visions.pdf
A vision of education from Randy Hinrichs at Microsoft: www.microsoft.com/education/DOWNLOADS/Vision/VisionlifeLongLearning.doc
Let the Games Begin: Gaming Technology and Entertainment among College Students: www.pewinternet.org
A book recommended by Jim Gee: DiSessa, Andrea A. Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and Literacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
The Digital Multiplier ("Digital technology should multiply, not divide") promotes the idea of eliminating the digital divide in education worldwide (www.digitalmultiplier.org). Other organizations, including digitaldivide.org at www.digitaldivide.org, are doing similar things.
Open source licenses identified by Prensky: http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/, www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html, and www.gnu.org/copyleft/
A letter regarding the risk of cell phones to the blood brain barrier: www.emraa.org.au/telecoms/carlo.htm
Jim Gee identifies two experiments in which experts participated in multiplayer games with students. "Michael Cole at the University of California-San Diego has run a game-like system in after-school programs for years. In his system, adult experts play the role of a wizard who guides the kids and interacts within them within the game worlds. Ann Brown's organization, Classroom Learning Communities, has regularly recruited local experts to interact with kids doing their own research via e-mail."
Girls and Computer/Video Games
American Association for University Women. Tech-Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age. Washington, DC: Author, 2000.
Bruckman, Amy. Community support for constructionist learning. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 7: 47-86 (1998). (www.cs.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/cscw.html).
Bruckman, Amy, Carlos Jensen, and Austina DeBonte. "Gender and Programming Achievement in a CSCL Environment." Long talk, paper presented at the Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (CSCL) 2002 conference, Boulder, CO, January 2002.
Cassell, Justine & Henry Jenkins (eds.). From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
Dede, Chris & Diane Ketelhut. "Motivation, Usability, and Learning Outcomes in a Prototype Museum-based Multi-User Virtual Environment." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL, April 2003.
Erickson, Erik H. "Identity Confusion in Life History, Case History." In Adolescent Behavior: Readings and Interpretations edited by Elizabeth Aries. Guilford, CT: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin.
Jones, M. Gail, Ann Howe, & Melissa J. Rua. "Gender Differences in Students' Experiences, Interests and Attitudes toward Science and Scientists." Science Education, 84(2), 180-192 (2000).
Laurel, Brenda. Utopian Entrepreneur. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.
Yee, Nicholas. The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of EverQuest, 2001. Retrieved August 1, 2003, from www.nickyee.com/eqt/report.html
