What’s epistemic and what’s not
Paul Baker from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research reviews How Computer Games Help Children Learn on his blog, including an excellent description of the difference between epistemic and (current) commercial games:
Shaffer mentions SimCity as an example of a ‘great’ educational game, a commercial game, designed primarily for entertainment. But it’s not epistemic. The game ‘Urban Science,’ by contrast, is epistemic. It’s designed to re-create an urban planning practicum. Urban Science develops the epistemic frame of the profession of urban planning, where collaboration and accountability are part of the work.
Epistemic games are based on the idea that, over time, the professions have evolved sophisticated techniques for helping novices take on the epistemic frame of a profession. The point of epistemic games is NOT that they can do the same things that schools do, only better, or that they can do the same thing that commercial games do only with more math, science, and social studies in them. The point IS that they are a fundamentally different way of thinking about learning, based on a fundamentally different way of thinking about thinking.
So the question in education is no longer: How can we make sure every student learns math or science or history? Rather, Shaffer says, we need to ask, Which epistemic frame should students develop to become fully actualized and empowered citizens in a postindustrial society?
Cell phones in school? For news?
Over the holidays, the BBC reported that London middle school students are taking part in a BBC project that brings journalism into the classroom. The 8th graders researched local news in daily newspapers and websites, collected interview information with their cell phones’ mp3 recording capabilities, and took photographs with camera phones. Once they had gathered all of their source material, they used technology available in their classrooms to write broadcast reports on deadline and record audio/video the files (mpeg4) for placement on a BBC-affiliated website, School Report.
