No sitting still in Europe either
How Computer Games Help Children Learn focuses on conditions in the United States, but the signs abound that in an era of global competition, any high-wage country that wants to prosper needs to prepare its young people for innovation and creativity. Consider, for example, this from the Economist on furniture making in Italy:
“Chinese competition and a weakening dollar have made the past four years terribly painful,” says Pasquale Natuzzi, whose firm is the biggest in the furniture-making cluster that sprang up around the south-eastern town of Matera in the 1960s….
Like many other local firms, Natuzzi has had to lay off workers at its factories near Matera. “Five years ago the cluster had around 400 firms and employed more than 11,000 people. Probably one-third of those businesses have shut,” says Saverio Calia, chairman of the local industrialists. But he expects the situation to get even worse over the next few years, with more closures and job losses, as well as temporary lay-offs under a national scheme to help firms in difficulty.
Mr Calia’s own firm has temporarily laid off about one-third of its 600-strong workforce. Matera’s sofa cluster is suffering because its firms did not foresee the threat to their traditional, low-technology business of making medium- to high-quality leather furniture posed by low-wage economies in the developing world. “Labour costs in China are one-tenth of ours,” says Eustachio Nicoletti, managing director of his family’s business, “and Chinese workers are far more flexible.” Mr Calia says the quality of Chinese furniture is just as good as Italian, and the Chinese copy Italian designs quickly and accurately.
Sound familiar?
Now available…
The most comprehensive work to date on epistemic games:
How Computer Games Help Children Learn
How can we make sure that our kids are learning to be creative thinkers in a world of global competition? David Williamson Shaffer offers a fresh and powerful perspective on computer games and learning. How Computer Games Help Children Learn shows how video and computer games can help teach kids to build successful futures–but only if we think in new ways about education itself.
In praise of print
Sometimes I wonder why, in the digital age, I bothered to write a book. Printed academic journals seem like they are quickly going the way of the dinosaur, and most of the feedback I get about my research comes from things people have read online rather than in printed copies of journals that take years to appear.
This isn’t to take anything away from the importance of having other researchers review work. I’m all for that, and think it is an important part of vetting results of research. But the print itself seems to get in the way rather than facilitate to conversation of ideas on which any kind of research depends.
So why write a book?
Wii elbow, and other powers of technology
For the past year or so, we’ve heard lot about Dance Dance Revolution, the PS2 game where players carry out dance moves coordinated with on-screen avatars. The game is lots of fun, but the buzz has been more about the fact that, with a dance pad controller (a pad on the floor you can actually dance on to control the game), players get a workout playing the game.
In the recent “platform wars” sparked by the simultaneous release of the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii (both competing with the latest Microsoft XBox 360), talk as been about the PS3′s incredible computing and graphics power–how realistic the games look–and the Wii’s innovative controller. The controller requires you to move your body rather than just your thumbs–so you swing a tennis raquet by actually swinging your arm rather than just pushing a button. Hardly a week after its release, the Wii is getting press about how players are starting to get tired from playing with the new system.
So, score one for games moving off the couch. Score another for innovative interfaces and the simulated worlds they make possible. And score yet another for the ability to think about games–and epistemic games–in a whole new array of fields.
DZ summer 2006
During the summer of 2006, twelve middle school girls played a four-week version of the Digital Zoo epistemic game. The players worked in teams of three as part of the Digital Zoo Prototype Development Department to develop a series of animated, wire-frame characters that expressed a particular emotion, using the Sodaconstructor spring-mass modeling environment.
Advanced undergraduate engineering students functioned as design advisors to the teams, providing feedback and guidance with the design process as needed. A panel of three engineering experts came in at the end of each week for a formal design review with the design teams, creating a professional setting for the players to present their engineering progress. Preliminary results demonstrate that the players were able to learn about concepts in physics (such as center of mass) and biomechanics (such as gait). In addition, players began to develop the epistemic frame of engineering, as evidenced by an increased understanding of the design process and the profession as a whole.
Currently, we are continuing to analyze data from the epistemic game as well as plan the next iteration of the Digital Zoo… check back for more specific results soon!
