One video game at a time
A nice piece in the Chicago Tribune on epistemic games begins with a great lead:
Video games that teach beyond basics
Alex L. Goldfayn
December 25, 2006For more than a decade, professor David Williamson Shaffer has been trying to change the world, one video game at a time.
And he has his work cut for him. Shaffer is not just trying to change kids, but the very school system that teaches them.
The rest of the piece is a nice summary of the arguement for epistemic games, too!
Google Universe
This just in from the BBC:
Detailed 3D images of the Moon and Mars will soon be just a click away for web users, following a deal between search giant Google and US space agency Nasa.
The Space Agreement Act, signed on Monday, will put “the most useful of Nasa’s information on the internet”.
…
“This agreement between Nasa and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars,” said Nasa administrator Michael Griffin.
I don’t think there’s any need to explain why that is INCREDIBLY COOL… or after Gina’s recent post, why it opens up exciting possibilities for epistemic games….
Happy happy holidays from Google and NASA.
Google-icious!
It appears that Google is jumping headfirst into the primordial soup that is technology-based K-12 education. CNN has recently reported that Google is offering a free online word processor and spreadsheet editor (among several other useful online tools such as Google Maps, Google Earth, and a 3D imaging tool called Google SketchUp). This is great news for schools and educators that would like to develop technological fluency in their students but cannot afford higher-end software packages like MS Office or AutoCAD.
Blogger Brent Schlenker
Brent is a Corporate Learning Blogger, Strategist, and Consultant who got a copy of How Computer Games Help Children Learn from a colleague. He’s put up a couple of posts on the book, including a “prediction for 2007″:
I believe it will begin to move Games into the learning world as a legitimate learning tool. I loved reading this book and have recommended to all my friends.
He also writes in another post:
Epistemic Frames – I love this term. It took me a while to get used to it, but by the end of the book David had me hooked. I also love the term SKIVE – That’s something we can all hang our collective hat on. (Read the book or wait for me to find time to post about it.)
That’s really great to hear, because the word “epistemic” was always something of a risk in the book. People don’t know what it means. They can’t pronounce it. It makes a simple and important idea sound really complex.
I kept the term because epistemology–the study of knowledge–really is at the center of the debate. School is organized around a particular understanding of what’s worth knowing and how people learn it. The claim is that the academic disciplines are the “fundamental ways of thinking” that everyone needs. The idea of epistemic frames is that people who solve problems in the real world have ways of thinking that are just as coherent and fundamental as academic disciplines.
So I stuck with the term, knowing that it takes a little getting used to because it captures an important point:
Wii vs 3
Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of buzz in the last few weeks about the contrast between Sony’s new Play Station 3 console and the new Nintendo Wii–including some earlier posts (here) (here) in the epistemic games blog.
On one hand, there are those who are wowed by the power of the PS3 to render almost life-like graphics and a impressively realistic physical interactions. In a recent article, Scott Miller of 3D Realms points out:
Physics allows for environments and gameplay situations that aren’t scripted.
Get the physics right, and you can really let players do what they want in a virtual world. Andrew Goldman, who runs Pandemic Studios, argues that soon, players might be able to do something as sophisticated as “pour petrol on the ground, watch it spread out and then set fire to it.”
The other side of the argument is in the Nintendo, which has focused on interface–and in particular on the way that the interface makes it possible to interact in a game more like you interact with things in the real world. When you bowl with the Wii, it feels like bowling. As Atari founder Nolan Bushnell says (originally available at: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=20021&hed=Atari+Founder+Bullish+on+Social+Gaming%2c+Wii+):
I see active games as a solid trend–Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, for example. I believe that this is something that important [and is] going to get better and better.
Apparently the market agrees with him at the moment.
