"Fun from games arises out of mastery. It arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that make games fun," wrote Raph Koster in A Theory of Fun. What make games fun is learning. This raises a question. If learning is fun, then what is going so wrong in our schools? As teachers and administrators we can learn a lot from games and game design. The modern form with most relevance to our students are video games.
My experience with education software and games is somewhat limited. Currently I have no idea what products are available on the market. I come from the days of Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail. I recently visited a teacher who used a modifies racing game that students used to collect physics data and the video was projected so the whole class could watch. Some games have come a long ways.
When it comes to learning most educational games miss the mark. They attempt to be teacher replacements and, in conjunction with poor game design, students do not learn. Nothing can replace a skilled teacher. It is their discretion to find the right tool for the job and to implement them in ways to promote student success. This may involve video games, it may not.
Gee's paper, Good Video Games and Good Learning, resonates with the question I posed above. Teachers can, and should, approach the problem the same way a game designer would. Remove the unfun elements. Gee hit the nail on the head with the comparison to biology class. A current paradigm for inquire learning in science is for students to do science and create their own relevant knowledge. All sixteen points raised are things I already value in education or learned from reading A Theory of Fun.
My current collection of games would better serve social studies or language class. The old Maxis games of yore, such as SimEarth, SimLife, and SimAnt, could work, but their age might make them inaccessible to many students. Some no longer work with modern computers. Yet we should not limit ourselves to video games. Board games and table top role playing games all have great potential to be used in the classroom as well while still fulfilling Gee's sixteen point paper. Learning is fun. It can be argued that games go too far into entertainment, but is that not the point?
Hay Man, I loved the paper on games by Gee. I think that games have an incredible the way they draw the player in, get them excited about the task at hand and then some how, the player is willingly exhausting there entire brain power for hours solving problems and learning new things. He is right. If we could get students to behave the same way with the subject mater we need to teach them then that would really be something. I hope it works out that way in the future.
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