Games As a Way to Get Schooled. No, I Mean Literally.

January 12, 2007

Three cheers for David Williamson Shaffer, an Education Science Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Co-author of the book "How Computer Games Help Children Learn," he's been touring the media advocating the use of computer games in the classroom. There, kids can learn valuable skills that, in his opinion, make them more competitive and technology-savvy in the global market. Skills like blowing up cars (Kidding). His argument is that the current educational system was developed in the late 1800s to prepare kids for life in industrial America, and isn't relevant in a connected, multitasking, interactive world.

As it turns out, Shaffer isn't the only person to think this way. Last year I was chatting with Nolan Bushnell -- yes, that Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari -- and he had a lot of the same ideas. A perpetual entrepreneur, Bushnell is writing a book about creating wired schools where the education is interactive and students plow through material at their own pace. Your reward for completing interactive learning assignments is "points" you can spend to, say, email your classmates. But if you use some of your new vocabulary words in the email, you can send it for free. Teachers would be available to monitor how everyone is doing and then to sit down one-on-one with individual students to help them along. I'm hardly doing the idea justice in a short paragraph here, but the point is that there are plenty of smart people out there who see games as something that can really help kids.

I think using games for education isn't just a great thing to do for students ... it's a great way to erase the stigma that games are "bad entertainment" and to foster better game development all around. I learned more about business from that Lemonade game for the Apple ][ than a dozen business books could ever teach me -- supply, demand, setting prices, planning ahead, marketing, etc. -- skills that I still use every day. Same with my lucrative blaster-sales business in Star Wars Galaxies. That's right: Games made me a better person! Thoughts on games and education? Mail me!

      -Fargo

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