Epistemic fix
Want a quick epistemic games fix? If you are in Madison and near a radio tomorrow (Friday Feb 1) at 10 am CST, David will be on the Kathleen Dunn show on Wisconsin Public Radio (90.9) talking about How Computer Games Help Children Learn, which was just released in paperback. You can listen to the program here.
When “just-right” is wrong: A Recalibration
Sometimes, when describing what I do to someone, I deliberately don’t mention who plays epistemic games. When the inevitable question comes, and I reveal that middle-schoolers are redesigning their city and presenting to the mayor, and elementary-age students are using spring-mass modeling simulations, people are usually shocked. Just last night, someone at a party confessed that she thought the games were for 18-year olds. This reaction is typical, and reflects a tragic and very dangerous tendency to underestimate the capabilities of young people.
In a recent piece (registration required) in the New York Times Movies section about appropriate movies for children, A.O Scott brings up what his children’s teachers have referred to as “just-right books,” which are books that are “just-right” developmentally, not too easy and not too hard. The idea of coddling children in a comfort zone so that they get neither too bored nor too frustrated seems to make sense (in fact, structuring our schools by grade level reflects this philosophy). As a parent (and movie-writer), Scott rejects this approach when he decides what movies are suitable for his children to watch. While he fears he may be ignoring the “pedagogical expertise of the professionals,” he argues that there is “pleasure to be found in bewilderment, in the struggle to make sense of what is just above your head, and there is wisdom as well.” Thus, he tends to allows his children to watch movies that other parents may deem to be too sophisticated.
It turns out that Scott was simply listening to wrong professionals. Lev Vygotsky, one of the most influential developmental psychologists of the 20th century, would argue that the bewilderment that Scott describes is in fact what is “just-right.” Vygotsky calls the struggle to make sense of what is just above your head “the zone of proximal development.” Because children learn by participating socially in new, challenging activities and internalizing strategies so that they may later accomplish the same task on their own, Vygotsky suggests that what a child can do with guidance from an adult or a more accomplished peer is a better predictor of the child’s future capabilities.
The “just-right” approach of Scott’s children’s teachers is very useful for shifting blame. If a child’s ability is simply a product of the child’s intelligence or maturity, then it makes sense to blame the child’s intelligence and maturity for failure. But if ability is the product of what can be done with help, the failure is shared by the helpers: the teachers, the mentors, and even the design of the learning environments themselves. As How Computer Games Help Children Learn explains, epistemic games follow Vygotsky’s sense of “just-right.” They are designed so that players get stuck on difficult challenges very often, but also so that there are multiple options for seeking help.
The catch, of course, is that Vygotsky’s method requires much more work. Scott watches movies with his children, and recognizes that the conversations that inevitably follow are not always easy. Conversations about why Russia invaded Afghanistan after watching “Charlie Wilson’s War,” and conversations about sex and teenage pregnancy after watching “Juno,” can be difficult for parents. Pleasing stakeholders and clients is very difficult. But as Scott describes, there is joy and learning in the difficulty, and if we don’t challenge ourselves to challenge young people, we are surely doing them a disservice.
A smackdown it is
So here is a depressing item from the news last month (originally available at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/12/13/dc.smackdown.ap/index.html?eref=rss_tech): a “political” video game called “DC Smackdown.” In the game:
A pantsless Bill Clinton chases a herd of Monica Lewinskys, Jesse Jackson hurls Hasidic Jews and Anne Coulter has a special “verbal diarrhea” attack.
The game is meant to be a “fun commentary on what’s going on.”
It seemed more “crude” than “fun”–but more to the point, it is games like these and press like this that does so much to convince the public that games are part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
In How Computer Games Help Children Learn, for example, I write about a very different kind of political game, The Political Machine:
Is it a game?
Hearing about epistemic games in which young people spend hours working on reports, sitting in meetings, and sweating out deadlines, people occasionally wonder aloud, “But is it really a game?” Jane McGonigal’s article “‘This is not a game’: immersive aesthetics and collective play” provides some interesting additional context for thinking about this question.
Continue reading »
Everyday Innovators
A recent article in the New York Times called How to Improve It? Ask Those Who Use It describes how Eric von Hippel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, is a “leading advocate of the value of letting users of products modify them or improve them, because they may come up with changes that manufacturers never considered. He thinks that this could help companies develop products more quickly and inexpensively than with their internal design teams.” He calls this phenomenon user-driven innovation. One of his studies “found that 82 percent of new capabilities for scientific instruments like electron microscopes were developed by users.” For example, Detroit’s automakers tend to mimic and standardize the modifications individuals make to their cars (spoilers, fins, and 30-speaker stereo systems come to mind). And software, particularly gaming software, is increasingly open-source, or open to modifications (‘mods’) by users.
While the article, which is found in the business section of the Times, is primarily concerned with the economic ramifications and possibilities of user-driven innovation, it highlights a trend that reinforces the importance of re-envisioning how our schools are preparing our children. As the article points out, everyday people, and not just professionals, are increasingly getting opportunities to contribute to innovations that improve our lives. To take the most advantage of such opportunities, young people need design experience, the kind of experience typically sidelined in the rush to ace standardized tests.
Epistemic Games, on the other hand, ask players to inhabit the shoes of innovative professionals. In a game like Digital Zoo, players, as engineers-in-training, design, build and test products for a client. While the young people play the role of engineers in the game, the expectation is not that all of the kids will grow up to be engineers. What’s important is that they can see the world and problem-solve as if they were engineers. This type of experience may very well prepare them to be the everyday innovators that von Hippel extols.
