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Technologists
Explore How Games Can Be Used As Learning Tools
NY1, June 9, 2004
It's probably one of the most frequent sticking
points between parents and their children: how much time should
be spent playing video games. As NY1 Tech Beat reporter Adam
Balkin explains, we're getting closer to that point in time when
parents may actually start encouraging their kids to play.
Imagine this: video games where the goal is to
save people, not shoot them. And after winning, players may actually
have learned something.
A recent workshop spearheaded by Global Kids called "Serious
Issues, Serious Games" explored whether the power of gaming
can be harnessed to help the powers of good.
"Right now there are 145 million people in
the U.S. that are playing games," said Dave Rejeski of Serious
Games Initiative. "What we're trying to do is figure out
how to apply that to serious political and social issues in the
country and also globally. Everything from balancing the budget
in New York City to finding missing children to learning more
about the history of America and sort of what happened after
the settlement of America."
"I'm kinda here as a representative of 'The
Man,' you know," said Brian Loube of AOL Games. "Big
corporation may or may not be interested in promoting social
issues, but I am totally interested in making this thing available
to lots of people. AOL representing a cross-section of Middle
America is the perfect audience for these games. So if there's
anyway to make this happen, it seems like a smart thing to do."
The main obstacle developers admit is tough to
overcome, creating a game with a meaning that gamers will choose
to play over traditional, graphic shoot-'em-ups.
"When you're creating a game, you don't want
people to know that they're learning something," said Theresa
Riley of POV Interactive. "It's got to be happening from
behind the scenes. That's why games are great because they get
so caught up in the mechanic of the game, looking at winning
and the goals involved in that, and then just the interactive
experience itself and once they're caught up in that the learning
happens in the background."
Since maybe the only device teenagers may spend
more time with than their computers are their cell phones, there
was some talk about how to move some educational content into
them.
"I think that everything we're doing educationally
could potentially be done through the cell phone," said
Marc Prensky of Games2Train. "It's the most under-used platform
that we have for learning, for education. It's something that's
in people's pockets and apparently it's the only other thing
than the wallet that people will go back home for if they forget
it."
Check out the following links for some examples
of "serious games":
www.netaid.org/youth/peter_packet/game.pt
www.gothamgazette.com/budgetgame/budgetgame.html
www.gothamgazette.com/breakdown/
www.netaidworldclass.org/kids/
www.pbs.org/pov/borders/2004/earth/index.html
www.tropicalamerica.com
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