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.

Having designed an epistemic game around an exisiting – and free – internet tool (SodaConstructor), I am interested and excited by Google’s ever-expanding toolset. Several of these programs have the potential to be used as components of an epistemic game engine – an idea that my colleague Elizabeth Bagley is already developing in her game engine for Urban Science. Another possibility might be to have upcoming versions of Digital Zoo implement Google SketchUp to make 3D models from the 2D character prototypes. Or perhaps players in the Pandora project can use Google Blogger or Google Page Creator to present their stakeholder’s perspective online. And so on, and so forth…

Of course, using an existing tool or program as part of an epistemic game engine comes with some significant tradeoffs. Depending on the malleability of the tool, it may be next to impossible to modify and customize it in order to make it more authentic to the professional practices being modeled in the epistemic game. However, on the upside, hundreds of hours can be saved by not having to develop an engine from scratch. This can be particularly appealing to educators who have solid pedagogical ideas about developing epistemic games, but may not have the programming chops to develop an engine themselves.

In other words, tools like those being developed by Google might just play a key role in the propagation of epistemic games into the broader K-12 context. Keep on churning ‘em out, Google!