Recent posts for How Computer Games Help Children Learn

Las Vegas school utilizing educational video games

The Anderson Dawson School in Las Vegas has begun using a multiplayer computer game to teach middle school students engineering and technology concepts, a method that the school is finding is more engaging for students.

The game the students played is similar to Land Science, where middle schoolers become urban designers, and Nephtorex, where undergraduate engineers role-play as professional engineers-in-training.

In the game played by the students at the Anderson Dawson School the player is stranded in Alaska and much build a shelter in order to prevent contracting hypothermia.

Students must pass 10 levels in the game, levels that teach concepts such as the volume and surface area of geometric shapes, conductive heat flow, structural design and more. The overall goal of the program is to help students understand the heat equation, which is the transfer of heat in a given space over time.

Jonathan Walton, one of the students that has been participating in the program said that he has really enjoyed the class, and that’s it has been one of his favorites this year.

“We’re not just sitting in a classroom and taking tests,” Jonathan said. “We learned engineering principles on the computer, and we’re using that experience.”

“It’s just really fun.”

For more information read the full article from the Las Vegas Review Journal about the program at the Anderson Dawson School.

(Photo courtesy of Jeff Mosier/Las Vegas Review Journal)

Viral Buzz for Epistemic Games

Recently a PBS Wisconsin Media Shift blog post got people talking about Epistemic Games.  Aran Levasseur highlights David Williamson Shaffer’s book, “How Computer Games Help Children Learn,” and positioned epistemic games as the future of education—an idea that the Epistemic Games Group has been arguing for years.

Levasseur gets straight to the point when he says schools need to be looking to the future, not the past, for innovations in the classroom.

“As schools aim to prepare students for life outside of school, they need to realize that the world now values knowledge and skills that can be applied in creative ways. Epistemic games fit the learning requirements of today’s world because they allow students to role-play professions while learning skills that they apply in the game.”

Levassuer’s article is a great review of the epistemology that is behind Epistemic Games and learning through play.

“In playing games,[students] are doing explicitly, openly and socially what as adults they will do tacitly, privately and personally. They are running simulations of worlds they want to learn about in order to understand the rules, roles and consequences of those worlds.”

Games to Teach and Games to Test: Developing and Assessing Innovation

David Williamson Shaffer was invited to speak for Arizona State University Learning Sciences Institute’s ALL series.

This video  presents a perspective on learning and assessment suited to the realities of modern work and education in a knowledge-based society.  Shaffer explores the research behind Epistemic Games.

“The work that I have been trying to do is to develop a game-like environment, a culture, where you would actually be able to learn, to think; in the way that people in the real world who solve problems; do.”

In particular he points to Nephrotex, an Epistemic Game that teaches students to behave like engineers, and the different engineering gender gap theories. Shaffer argues that students

“…actually came into engineering so they could be engineers.  They spend the first three years of engineering doing calculus, basic science courses and they aren’t actually designing anything.”

Nephrotex lets first year students experience what it actually means to be a professional engineer by participating in authentic engineering design. Epistemic games like Nephrotex can be used to propel education forward in the 21st century.

David Williamson Shaffer at the VLOS Research Meeting: ‘Epistemic Games and Learning’

David Williamson Shaffer, in a talk he gave at the VLOS Research Meeting, Utrecht University, called ‘Epistemic Games and Learning,’ argues that the needs of students today are not the same as they were 50 years ago. His presentation describes epistemic gaming and epistemic network analysis as examples of how teaching and assessment might change to better suit the needs of 21st century students. He concludes by arguing that we need to be more purposeful about how we design educational experiences for youth, suggesting that

“whatever choice [of education style] we make, we have to make it based on some understanding of what it is we want students to accomplish, and what it is we as educators need to do to get them there.”

The importance of IP

A recent report by the British Government argues that, as in the US:

Intellectual Property is a critical component of our present and future success in the global economy. The UK’s economic competitiveness is increasingly driven by knowledge-based industries, especially in manufacturing, science-based sectors and the creative industries.

According to some sources, nearly half of the GDP of the United States is based on intellectual property.

The report focuses on copyright issues, and clearly and appropriate policy for protection of intellectual proprety (that also doesn’t constrain the development of new intellectual property!) is critical in a knowledge economy. But so are the processes that lead to the generation of new ideas: innovation and creativity.