John Connell: The Blog

This post has been pub­lished simul­ta­ne­ously on the Promethean Planet web­site.

James Gee is a con­tro­ver­sial voice in the debate around the use of dig­i­tal games in edu­ca­tion. He has an inter­est­ing take on what he sees as ‘spe­cial’ about games, espe­cially in con­trast to what is spe­cial about books:

• Games are based not on con­tent, but on prob­lems to solve. The con­tent of a game (what it is “about”) exists to serve prob­lem solving.
• Games can lead to more than think­ing like a designer; they can lead to design­ing, since play­ers can “mod” many games, i.e., use soft­ware that comes with the game to mod­ify it or redesign it.
• Gamers co-author the games they play by the choices they make and how they choose to solve prob­lems, since what they do can affect the course and some­times the out­come of the game.
• Games are most often played socially and involve col­lab­o­ra­tion and competition.

Problem-solving, design, cre­ativ­ity, social activ­ity, col­lab­o­ra­tion, com­pe­ti­tion: all are intrin­si­cally impor­tant com­po­nents of effec­tive teach­ing and worth­while learn­ing. As Gee has noted elsewhere:

Dig­i­tal games are, at their heart, prob­lem solv­ing spaces that use con­tin­ual learn­ing and pro­vide path­ways to mas­tery through enter­tain­ment and pleasure.

And to those who might doubt the social aspect of com­puter games (prob­a­bly not them­selves game play­ers), Tom Chat­field, one of the most intel­li­gent voices in this area wrote in Prospect back in 2008 about his own play­ing of Grand Theft Auto (itself one of the tar­gets of those who believe com­puter games are intrin­si­cally harmful):

The game is full of pas­tiche vio­lence; of slyly explicit dia­logue and cease­less minor homages to cin­ema, tele­vi­sion and music. It has an 18 cer­tifi­cate, and I won’t be invit­ing any nine year olds to join me in inves­ti­gat­ing its world. But the play expe­ri­ence is an open-ended delight of explo­ration and won­der: “Lib­erty City,” a lov­ingly detailed par­al­lel New York city, within which you can pass hours dri­ving around in var­i­ous vehi­cles, watch­ing the sun rise and set, try­ing to attract the atten­tions of cops and then shake them off, and—in one espe­cially mem­o­rable moment—driving a stolen ambu­lance off a road­bridge on to a raised sec­tion of train­line, then manoeu­vring it under­ground and through the “Man­hat­tan” rail­way net­work. All this is best done in com­pany, and most of the plea­sure I’ve taken from the game has involved sit­ting on a sofa with friends, dis­sect­ing the city and diss­ing each other’s dri­ving skills with glee­ful abandon.

These com­ments are by way of intro­duc­ing the next Edu­ca­tion Fast For­ward debate, which will take place on Tues­day 18^th April under the title: Inno­va­tion, Learn­ing and Uncer­tainty.

The intro­duc­tory speak­ers will be Geoff Mul­gan, Chief Exec­u­tive of NESTA, and Dr Paul Howard-Jones, senior lec­turer at the Grad­u­ate School of Edu­ca­tion, Uni­ver­sity of Bristol.

Geoff will cover, amongst a num­ber of issues, the pri­or­ity fields for inno­va­tion over the next 5–10 years and the rela­tion­ship of games and play to hard work.

Paul will offer some insights from neu­ro­science on why games might be a ‘spe­cial’ influ­ence on the brain and on how we are now ready to develop, aided by the tech­niques and con­cepts of neu­ro­science, a new gen­er­a­tion of highly engag­ing learn­ing games that draw on our bur­geon­ing under­stand­ing of brain function.

The debate wil involve some 25 con­trib­u­tors from around a dozen coun­tries (so far, Aus­tralia, Bel­gium, Brazil, Canada, France, Hun­gary, Kenya, Nor­way, Por­tu­gal, the UK and the US are all involved) and it takes place across the mag­i­cal medium of Telep­res­ence. As usual it will be streamed live across the Web. Go to the EFF web­site for more details and or look for fur­ther updates here on my blog as well as others.

Tech­no­rati Tags: edu­ca­tion fast for­ward, com­puter games, edu­ca­tion, telep­res­ence