Videogames are better teachers?
This Wired article brings up some very good points on how video games are teaching students today. Not how to carjack and shoot people, but how to manage a group of beings to solve problems (Pikmin), carry out intricate missions (Metal Gear Solid 2), and micromanage resources (Warcraft III).
How did videogames become such successful models of effective learning? Game coders aren’t trained as cognitive scientists. It’s a simple case of free-market economics: If a title doesn’t teach players how to play it well, it won’t sell well. Game companies don’t rake in $6.9 billion a year by dumbing down the material - aficionados condemn short and easy games like Half Life: Blue Shift and Devil May Cry 2.
The games teach the players how to play the game. The players are rewarded by applying what the game has taught them. There is also anecdotal evidence that playing some of these games are helping youngsters as young as 4 to read.
Are videogames a replacement for teachers? NO! We overlook that things should be done in moderation. A class that only plays Pikmin might learn how to manage an army of alien beings, but will it help them in History?
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Either the school system in your country is really lacking in experiential learning, or that Wired Article’s writer is quite ill-informed of the evolution of education.
Experiential learning does involve some extent of pleasure and frustration, depending on what type of tasks the teacher sets the children. The article seemed to suggest that schools were not providing this aspect.
Furthermore, new age teaching is no longer centered around sheer drilling. Educationists are starting to see the advantages of going somewhere between drilling and the ‘whole-language’ approach.
Finally, it doesn’t mean that providing frustration will necessarily spur people on to learn. From my personal experience, the kids who are academically weaker tend to give up more easily, so repeated frustrating experiences may only serve to deter them rather than encourage them in learning. The author of that Wired article might do well to read up on Management theories where people who experienced repeated failures did worse than those who experienced repeated successes, when all other conditions remained constant.
A good game designer balances the game play so it’s just frustrating enough. Enough to reward the player but not enough that the player quits playing. It’s a tightrope act.