Typically video games are associated with violence and turning kids into couch potatoes. But a report released by the Sesame Workshop this week challenges this stereotype. The report, titled "Game Changer," discusses the potential benefits digital learning has on educating children and motivating them to make healthier choices.
Panelists commenting on the report at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars believe video games can serve an integral role for changing how students are evaluated on what they can do. David Rejeski who directs the Serious Games Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said that games in classrooms today are limited to drilling students on facts. Rejeski heralded "serious games" as a way to cause students to become problem solvers.
Take for example the game Budget Hero. Players are placed in the shoes of Barack Obama and are presented with 160 real policy options of how to balance the nation’s budget. The applet does an effective job of taking a generally boring topic and turning it into an interactive learning experience. In fact, one teacher has written a two-day lesson plan around the game.
Budget Hero may be fun to play, but it is unknown how well the game can assess student learning across different student populations. Education and technology experts at the Woodrow Wilson event agreed that many small applets should be introduced to determine what works best as opposed to developing a few large-scale assessments that are more likely to fail. One benefit to testing digital assessments in classrooms is that video game developers can receive valuable feedback from teachers. Also, introducing teachers to interactive games will help them to become comfortable with using technology and the possibility of using high-stakes digital assessments in the future. A lot of work needs to be done to improve assessments, but it is refreshing to see that experts in the technology and education sectors are beginning to agree on the starting point: developing lots of applets for classroom evaluation.
-- Tim Harwood
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The problem is that "serious games" for learning that are closed source are fundamentally unserious about their own role. Teachers and students must be able to inspect and modify learning software, particularly political learning software. To do otherwise sends exactly the wrong message about 21st century citizenship -- trust the technology, trust the "experts," trust the programmers.
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