After reading more from James Paul Gee in his article “Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines” (PDF) I was no more encouraged than I was before about using video games of any kind to teach our children. His argument strikes me as being provocative for the sake of creating controversy and debate on the topic more so than to make a clear and compelling case for adopting gaming technologies for use in educational programs. He makes many gross over-generalizations and salacious analogies: “School is often built around…the idea that an academic area…is constituted by some definitive list of facts or body of information that can be tested in a standardized way” and “Under the right conditions, learning, like sex, is biologically motivating and pleasurable for humans (and other primates).” Certainly not all schools are built around teaching material solely for the purposes of standardized testing–private schools, for example, definitely do not, and I would bet that most teachers try very hard to teach things that are indeed going to be covered on those standardized tests, expand on those topics when they can, and teach creatively when they can.

One of Gee’s arguments, in the section about “co-design,” is that a great quality of games is that they can make players think and learn. I would argue that some clever players could play the game without seriously thinking or learning. Perhaps then Gee would say they are learning without knowing they are learning and he would argue that is a good thing. I would counter that learning without awareness that you are learning often leads to what he says later on in the article: “the well-known phenomenon that students with As because they can pass multiple-choice tests can’t apply their knowledge in practice.”

I do think Gee has some good points. He fails to acknowledge that many of his principles are actually applied in private schools and for many years have been part of the reasons parents choose these schools over the public educational system. These schools, generally speaking, do not “dumb it down” because they aren’t required to move as slowly as the slowest student in class. They also incorporate creative methods of learning, personalized attention and feedback, and interactivity. I would add that most science classes and language classes have more creative and interactive curricula than English or history classes. What about dissecting animals in biology lab? Or mixing chemicals in chemistry? Nowadays, language classes no doubt use computer programs to facilitate learning and to provide additional interactivity outside of class.

The bottom line for me with Gee’s argument is that some of his principles are good, but none can be employed without also reading and writing and attending class in the traditional way.

Niall Ferguson’s article “How to Win a War” was inspiring and very convincing and nearly makes me want to go out and buy that game The Calm & the Storm. He makes a clear case for some valuable ways video games can be used in an educational manner. Particularly with counterfactual questions. Games other than The Calm & the Storm, he says, are “just playing Space Invaders…with fancy graphics.” Still, without some basis of knowledge with which you enter the game and some discussion with a teacher about what you’ve played in the game, how can you know that the students are learning and learning to think in new and different ways?

I’ve commented on Ken’s Historiarum about using gaming as a teaching method because video games are a common experience for children today, and on Jenny’s blog about how Gee must have hated his own experience in school and how Ferguson’s article makes a more compelling case for the value of educational gaming.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 7:54 am and is filed under Clio Wired, History and New Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.