

The future of schooling may lie with video games - anuleczka
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=14350149

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wallflower
Neal Stephenson offered a tantalizing look at where the potential for adaptive
AI teaching lies with the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer in "The Diamond Age"

"A book that is powered by a computer so advanced it’s almost magical, and it
teaches children everything. It does this through a fully interactive story.
It teaches you how to read, how to do maths, it teaches you morals, ethics,
even self-defence."

[http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-
prime...](http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-primer/)

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chrischen
Yes if we have a computer that could answer our questions as soon as they come
up, that would be great. I mean to be able to instantly act on any
curiosities.

Actually we are getting pretty close what with the internet and Google.

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wallflower
Google may be working on an ancestor of The Primer as we write this. OLPC +
smart Google

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magoghm
My two kids learned english (we are Mexican and live in Mexico) by playing
videogames and watching cartoons. Although their mother and I both speak
english, we never spoke to them in english and they never took any kind of
english lessons.

They both started playing videogames when they were two years old. I found out
that games like Super Mario 64 were more educational than most PC
"educational" games. Finding the 100 coins in a Super Mario level turned out
to be an excellent way to learn about numbers and counting.

A few months ago they started playing World of Warcraft and since then I've
seen a great improvement in my youngest (11 years old) son's skill for written
communication.

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danteembermage
As a finance professor I've thought about how to incorporate some of this
thinking into my teaching. I do some, having my students implement trading
strategies in a simulator that we learned in class, but at the university
level it seems that everyone is better off if I cut the crap and just teach
them what they want to know, "chalk and talk" style.

I realize this doesn't scale well, but on some level I'm paid to teach small
groups not online masses so I don't think my students are paying for me to be
an "adviser" or "facilitator".

I like classroom games for teaching economic concepts like comparative
advantage, equilibrium interest rates, and the like, but it's not clear those
concepts are what I should be devoting time to in introductory corporate. For
International finance games seemed to be a better fit.

~~~
jakarta
just out of curiosity, what do you think of the criticism that finance
students tend to learn too much theory?

When I was doing a project for a hedge fund, I showed an MBA student my
analysis (financial model + write up on a bank) and this is a person that also
majored in finance at the college level and could not understand any of the
work.

It was pretty interesting. I never knew there was such a divergence. I ended
up teaching myself finance (liberal arts major) so I just learned by going to
the library and pouring over finance and accounting books.

I actually tell a lot of people that if they are interested in doing real good
analyst work they are probably better off majoring in accounting because the
finance end is easier to pick up outside of school.

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queensnake
Hey, don't submit 'printer friendly' links, it robs the content provider of
what teensy money they /can/ make from putting their stuff online.

~~~
anuleczka
Thanks for the tip! I'll remember that from now on.

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carpdiem
The effect of computer games on education is probably also tied to when the
person is exposed to the particular games.

As a kid, my best friends and I spent ages playing every manner of strategy
game out there, from Red Alert to Alpha Centauri. In retrospect, we've come to
the conclusion that those games taught us invaluable lessons about what it
takes to analyze new situations for optimum strategies, and how to balance
competing demands of time, resources, attention, and effort in the pursuit of
several related goals at once.

Of course, this doesn't apply so well for studying quantum mechanics, but for
learning project management, it's amazing.

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nzmsv
There's probably a way to teach almost anything using a computer. The problem
is in how to present this to the kids.

In school, computers are an afterthought, and aren't really part of the
curriculum in any meaningful way (except those couple of classes on Word and
Excel, which you do use).

In the best scenario, a teacher will seat the class in the computer lab, then
tell them to do research on the web for a report for an hour. Usually though,
a visit to the computer lab involves running some buggy "multimedia addon"
that ships with the textbook. It is always of awful quality, and, if it runs
at all, can be "explored" in about 5 minutes, with the kids wasting the rest
of the time hiding a Flash game or YouTube from the teacher. Finally, since
"this won't be on the test", most students don't care.

Here's what would work: a resource with voluntary participation. Something for
interested students to explore on their own time. Yes, most kids would rather
not do something that "feels like more work". I also know I would have enjoyed
something like this at that age.

It doesn't even have to be a game in the classic sense. Usually trying to fit
educational content in a game just feels fake and contrived, and the result is
neither educational nor fun. Kids aren't dumb, and see right through that. In
fact, different subjects may require different platforms.

This sounds like a great open-source project. A Wikipedia-style set of
learning materials. Someone make this please :)

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chrischen
The future is not necessarily just video games. If we can get education to be
intrinsically motivated, rather than motivated with external stimuli like
grades, then that would be so much more efficient.

Frankly I don't even think video games would work for all types of people,
just as the current system doesn't work for all types of people.

As long as we can get people to have fun while learning, or learn the things
they like, however they do it would be fine.

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carpdiem
Computer games can also improve your eyesight:

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16857-shootemup-
video-...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16857-shootemup-video-games-
may-be-good-for-eyesight.html)

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raintrees
I haven't been this jealous of a High-School curriculum since one of my
friends told me of his "School Without Walls" course. Keeping the boredom out
of learning seems so pivotal.

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ippisl
computer games , and educational software in general could make learning more
fun , more personalized , and probably much more effective.

But , one of the most important things children learn in school is to
concentrate on boring things , which is very usefull in most jobs.

So probably a balance should be kept between interesting, fun learning , and
boring learning.

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clistctrl
Not really a game, but I recently started learning Italian through Rosetta
Stone. The interactivity, and engagement makes it highly effective. When I was
in school I took French, but I had a hard time picking up the language. I feel
I know more Italian from the 3 lessons I've completed then I learned from an
entire year in French. Sorry if my comment sounds like a commercial, these are
just my honest feelings...

