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?
I agree, the idea that if there were a range of epistemic games available to address many curricular areas would be something that would help transform learning and make it accessible, relevant and appropriate. However, such a range does not really exist as far as I am aware. In the meantime, what we can continue to do is to adapt and imaginatively use commercial games that offer so mmany avenues into ‘traditional curriculum’. I look forward to the future development of games that would directly allow teachers to develop skills, knowledge, understanding and attitudes within frameworks that are explicitly linked to curricular aims.
Interesting but circular logic. All games are teaching machines, low level games teach low level concepts or reactions. Yes, even conditioned reflexes are learning. What we need to know is not what the game maker is teaching, usually. There are some good comercial games, there are some good educational games, but most of both suck.
The militay were heard to mutter “Its not like the game” while marching into Iraq. The logic and pardigms of the designer are immediately challenged by the logic of transendence: why should I play by your rules?
Tilt: Transendence is the ultimate logic. All finite logic can be outmanuvered. All finite state machines are vulnerable to the monkey wrench.
You have to teach those monkeys to be mechanics, and build a better world. Is the world we are building a game worth playing? That is the real question.