Jim and David talk about games and the future of education.

Originally posted 2008-03-29 11:03:35. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Final examinations reflect an antiquated and largely discredited theory of learning, which equates knowledge with factual recall. By discouraging exams, then, Harvard is hardly forsaking academic rigor. Instead, it’s clearing the way for a more engaging, challenging, and truly educative college experience.

The recent Gee/Shaffer essay on Looking Where the Light is Bad make the same point–and even goes further…

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.

Originally posted 2006-12-10 10:26:27. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

In computer games, students can learn by solving problems that are realistic, complex, and meaningful. So games have great potential to teach the kind of thinking that young people need in the digital age, says educational psychology professor David Williamson Shaffer. But after years of designing and testing digital learning environments emphasizing learning in action, Shaffer has turned to the problem of assessment. Shaffer’s research is housed in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Originally posted 2009-06-03 03:37:32. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

What was so wonderful about it is that when I read his name and biography, I realized that two decades ago when I was teaching in California, David gave a talk that I attended, and his talk was part of my formative thinking about graduate school and my career beyond.

And now, 20 years later, not even realizing that he had been one of my inspirations, here was an email from him, talking about the similarities in the work we were doing.

Needless to say, a great phone conversation ensued.

One of David’s recent pieces talks about some of the connections between his work and epistemic games, and I look forward to continuing the conversation….

When social networking tools aren’t enough

Readers of this blog already know that we think that simply being a “digital native” is not enough.

It is certainly true that children today are more comfortable with technology than many adults–and certainly than most adults today were when we were kids ourselves.

But it doesn’t follow that therefore adults have nothing to teach kids, to offer kids, or to do to influence how kids use digital media.

I offer as an example an email my young nephew recently sent me, with the subject line:

Fwd: Re: FW: CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPY

What followed was basically what we used to call a “Chain Letter”:

I’m 13 years old, and I wished That my dad would come home from The army, because he’d been having Problems with his heart and right Leg It was 2:53 p .m.. When I made My wish. At 3: 07 PM . (14 minutes Later), the doorbell rang, and There my Dad was, luggage and all!!

I’m Katie and I’m 20 and I’ve been Having trouble in my job and on the Verge of quitting. I made a simple Wish that my boss would get a new Job. That was at 1:35 and at 2:55 There was an announcement that he Was promoted and was leaving for Another city. Believe me…this Really works!!!

Just scroll down to the end, but While you do, think of a wish. Make your wish when you have completed Scrolling. Whatever age you are, is the Number of minutes it will take for your Wish to come true. Ex.you are 25 years Old, it will take 25 minutes for your wish To come true).

However, if you don’t send this to People in 5 minutes, you will have bad Luck for years!! Go for it!!!

I seem to get quite lot of these–and to be fair, I probably get about as many from adults as from kids. They’re reasonably harmless… well, if you ignore the fact that a strange adult got sent 284 email addresses of kids he doesn’t know and their friends because of all the “forwards” in the email chain.

But, more to the point, this is hardly what we hope for when we think of the great things children will do with their “native” technologies.

Which is why we provide epistemic games rather than just tools. We deliberately provide both the technology and the guidance the children need to use it for productive ends. A learning system, rather than simply another opportunity to wander in the media jungle.

In a nutshell, this package of Excel utilities makes it possible to run code from the statistical package R from within Excel. (Excel is, of course, not free.)

Those of you who are wondering what a “statistical package” is can spare yourself the rest of this post, of course.

For those of you who do know, and care, it means that you can (and we can!) compute all kinds of high level statistical analyses–including things like principal components, logistic regression, and even epistemic network analysis–in a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Why does that matter? Well, it means that it is possible to compute ENA statistics directly from raw data–including, ultimately, graphical visualizations–without ever leaving Excel. We’re also using it on the AutoMentor project to develop algorithms for automated coding.

Yes, it is that powerful. (Though I do shudder to think what would happen if this fell into the wrong hands.)

It will probably take us a little while to get templates for ENA up in a format that is easy to use, but for those of you who can’t wait, the package is definitely worth checking out.

And for a hard-core, high-end Excel junkie like me, it is heaven.

(Now, where did those last three weeks go???)

I’ve written before about the power of virtual worlds to make us experience things–feelings, sensations, situations–that seem incredibly realistic. But it is good to remember from time to time that there are some times and places where there is no substitute for reality itself.

I’m fairly sure that any thoughtful proponent of computer games in education would agree with that statement.

The question, in other words, isn’t whether there is a line between virtual worlds and the real world. The question is where to draw it. On that issue there seems to be a lot of disagreement.

The line has been shifting for some time–and will continue to shift, I think–narrowing the realm of things that “have to” take place in the real world.

Maybe one day computers will be powerful enough to completely simulate reality.In that world, kids whose teachers could not keep a pet in the classroom could still have the experience of interacting with an animal, feeding it, talking to it. More kids could have the same kind of experience my daughter had with Hedgie, and that would be a good thing.

Now, maybe it says something about who I am as an educator, a father, and a person, but I still don’t think my daughter would be better off knowing only a virtual Hedgie.

To my way of thinking, though, means that we should work all the harder to make virtual worlds available to all the kids who couldn’t meet Hedgie in person.

The best shouldn’t be the enemy of the good.

I was suddenly caught without my external memory field, without reliable communications, and without any way to reliably deal with the information that was coming into my life. I had come to depend on this technology, and then it failed.

A lot of things fell through the cracks: phone calls, doctor’s appointments, email exchanges.

[For those of you wondering, I did manage to recover the data. But if you sent me email last week and didn't hear back, it might be a good idea to resend it!]

The result, though, was an opportunity to ponder, first hand, one of the darker sides of technology…

My first reaction, honestly, was to feel a deeper sympathy for the Cassandras of the digital age who say that we will become dependent on our technologies, and if, heaven forbid, we ever lose them we will become helpless.

Well, OK. My first reaction was actually a long stream of obscenities. But my first rational reaction was  to think about the Cassandra argument.

And, yes, it was an awful week, and some important things got lost. But I also realized (once again) that the Cassandra argument has a fatal flaw in it:

The Cassandras of the digital age don’t weigh the conditional probabilities in their calculation.

What I realized is that, yes, this week was awful because of a failure of technology and my dependence on it. But that was one week of one year.

The other 51 weeks of this year–and the 52 weeks of the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that–were much better because of the technology. Much much better.

To be sure, the Cassandras are right that we have to take steps to protect ourselves from the most catastrophic failures of technology. Backing up my hard drive and iPhone regularly, for example, made this much less of a fatal meltdown than it could have been.

But you have to weigh the likelihood and frequency of failure into the cost/benefit calculation of becoming “dependent” on technology.

I was once at a meeting where Alan Kay argued that science was more important than literature by asking:

If you were stranded on a tropical island, would you rather have a topological map of the island, or a map of Tolkein’s Middle Earth?

To which my friend and colleague Rick Borovoy answered:

Most of the time when I am on a tropical island, I am at a beach resort, and there I’d rather have the Lord of the Rings than a science textbook.

[Added Jan 30] For the record, Alan doesn’t remember it quite that way, and I am not trying to put words in his mouth! See the comments below….

But, yes, when my Microsoft Exchange server fails, I would rather have my datebook on paper. Most of the time, though, I am much better off trying to manage information electronically.

Similarly, when people argue that kids need to learn basic math facts so they can give the right change if the cash register breaks down, you have to ask what they are giving up so they can be prepared for the relatively few times they might face that particular kind of emergency….

I was reminded of this is a very concrete way last week when I took my daughter and one of her friends to a synchronized swimming meet for their team, which is the first synchro meet I had ever been to. I did it because this is something that my daughter cares about. Something that she wants to spend time on. An interest that I want to share with her, even if I don’t hold it as an interest of my own.

Now, please don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against synchro as a sport. But driving an hour and a half and sitting for over two hours to…

Oh, well, rather than trying to explain, I’ll just copy my liveblog of the event below, which I imagine is not that different from how many parents experience watching their first videogame. It was really confusing, and a lot of it seemed pretty trivial to me as an outsider. But it was fun for my daughter, and in the end brings us closer together and lets me help shape her experience of that part of her life.

For those who don’t want to read below the jump, the point is: as a parent we do all kinds of things that our kids love but we don’t. And just like the decision to go see the latest Disney movie, whether you as a parent like to play computer games is not the last word on whether your could or should play them with your kids.

17.15 getting here was no problem, although it did take a few circuits in the parking lot to figure out which entrance to use.

17.20 as soon as we got inside the girls joined a group of their teammates an disappeared into the locker. My daughter had been saying she was nervous, but there wasn’t even really a moment to wish her luck. Little more than a chauffeur I am.

17.23 I looked at the signup sheets outside the pool, but they were singularly uninformative. Looks like there are maybe 30 kids in the meet? Or only 30 younger kids? Really, who can tell?

17.35 another dad in the bleachers suggests not losing sight of your kid, since they are all in the same outfit: black bathing suit and white cap. To my credit I can recognize my daughter’s stroke in the water during warm ups.

17.43 there is clearly no hope of finding another Madison parent here. So much for building community.

17.46 there is the usual concession stand with the usual junk. So it is like a swim meet, only more confusing since I have no idea what is going to happen, and clearly the kids will never be coming to the bleachers. I do have a new appreciation for what parents who haven’t been to swim meets before go through.

17.51 I asked a neighbor in the stands a question about the meet and she had no idea. Kind of feels like the blind leasing the blind.

17.57 still looks mostly like a bunch of white caps bobbing in the water.

18.04 fewer heads bobbing now. Kids moving to the side of the pool to chat with friends.

18.06 heads bobbing again.

18.07 I can’t help but think how interesting this would all be to an anthropologist. Perhaps that is why I’m not am anthropologist.

18.11 another more experienced parent says there are 2 sections to the meet. These are the little kids, and they finish up and can leave before the older kids start. 

18.12 all he bobbing head out of the pool now. The meet was supposed to start at 6pm.

18.13 someone just said “girls, line up”. But nothing is actually happening. How will they know where to line up, anyway?

18.14 just heard a kid saying “I don’t know where to go”

18.16 I’ve seen physics simulations of the random motion of particles in an ideal gas that seem less chaotic than this.

18.17 someone is trying to direct traffic, but it is hard to believe any kid could hear her over the commotion.

18.18 a more experienced parent just said to me: “I told you they all look the same”. But I’d recognize my daughter’s stance anywhere. Besides, she’s the only one chewing her fingers.

18.20 a judge just asked for quiet, but nothing happened.

18.22 a judge bellows for quiet and the first swimmer starts her routine.

18.23 my daughter is second in her group.

18.24 she gets about a 3.4. Snapped her leg up too quickly, I think. But then what do I know>

18.25 now she moves to the back of a very long line.

18.26 looks like my daughter’s score was actually pretty good for her group. But again, I can’t really tell.

18.31 talking with a dad who is on his second year of synchro and he isn’t really sure why is going on either.

18.33 just stripped down to my t-shirt because the pool is so hot. My informant says this is one of the less overheated pools.

18.35 my daughter has moved on to licking her thumb.

18.36 kind of odd that here is no cheering at all. It is almost surreal.

18.38 my daughter just saw me and waved.

18.43 my daughter does a baracuda (whatever that is). Gets 3.4 again.

18.46 last figure. It is a “walkover”. 3.2.

18.49 almost all the kids heading to the shower. So now I guess we wait for awards?

18.51 everyone just sitting around, sort of chatting.

18.53 the older kids are starting their warm ups. I think this may be a bad sign.

18.54 they just announced that the little kids awards will come after the next age group. There was a collective groan from the spectators.

18.55 lots of muttering complaints from the stands.

18.58 still no sign of my daughter from the showers.

19.00 my theory is that they are postponing awards to sell more hotdogs.

19.01 my land but it’s hot in here.

19.04 no change. I mean literally, no change.

19.08 one of the coaches said that the next age group will go much faster.

19.17 older kids done bobbing heads. Lined up and ready to go.

19.19 still lined up.

19.21 it is actually pretty amazing what these kids can do–even just that they can hold their breath so long.

19.26 well I wouldn’t use the word “quick” to describe this part of the meet.

19.53 my daughter won a first place in her division! Although the fact that she was the only person in her division does take some of the shine off the ribbon.

20.05 heading back to the parking lot….