The educational value of video games

[Craig A. Cunningham]

In a blog post at http://technopaideia.blogspot.com, I suggested that video games have a lot to teach teachers about education. This post found its way into a Facebook Note (the wonders of RSS), and a discussion ensued in which our own Len Waks basically said "video games are dope." I challenged him on this, and he directed me to a 2001 Ed Theory article he'd written about "computer mediated experience," comparing it to "real" experience with nature and tools.

COMPUTER MEDIATED EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION Educational Theory Volume 51, Issue 4, Date: December 2001, Pages: 415-432
Leonard J. Waks

I went to his article and discovered that he'd been a little more subtle than "dope" in his description of the possibilities of computer mediated experience:

"_blanket_ rejections of computer-mediated experiences in today's schools are foolish. Instead we must assess what they contribute, and how they are to be coordinated with other sorts of school and home learning experiences",

"Sims might be valuable not as _substitutes for_, but _adjuncts to_, firsthand experiences....a simulation may enable children to make conjectures and thought experiences and thought experiments that would be otherwise impossible...This type of use would restore simulations to their proper place in educational experience, not as canned and impoverished _substitutes for the primary_ phases of experience but as _objects of knowledge_ in _secondary experience - used as tools to increase control _in_ experience's primary phases."

Len's essay is quite thoughtful, although I believe it misses two key points about recent technological developments with virtual reality simulations. First, they are now SOCIAL enterprises, and so they provide an opportunity not only to "interact with a fixed and definite world," but to interact in very interesting ways with each other, in an environment that presents goals that require cooperation.

Second, virtual environments now allow the ongoing building OF the environment from within...they are NOT necessarily "pre-built" like "puzzles" that present only generalized situations. They can be iteratively designed by the participants in cooperation with (perhaps) a teacher, and thus can represent aspects of "specific real-life contexts."

So, yes, your 2002 analysis is well-grounded in Dewey, and i SHARE your concerns, but SimCity 3000, MathBlaster, and Tom Snyder's late 1990s stuff are not what we're talking about anymore.

Len responded: "Craig has a point. As the world evolves into real virtuality the on-line coordination of group behavior becomes a real-world experience and skill. This is the key idea about 'smart mobs', which I take to be models of the next stage of learning. Even here, there are important distinctions to be drawn between real virtuality and dream virtuality

Eventually we came to a compromise that "the value of computer-mediated experiences can be measured in terms of their connection to "reality," and that computer-mediated experiences that are pure fantasy are dope."

Comments?

[SCOTT ZAGORIA]

I forget nothing, Craig. I'm insatiable in my capability to recollect at least one fragment of everything I experience. For what it's worth, that might be regarded in a fashion as 'psychic metalearning' and I assume it is a formidably successful characteristic of video games/serious games. Agreed without consternation that brick and mortar schools hardly embody this conception.

Re: warehousing, the fact is that socialization entails a component of warehousing regardless of the context. We are warehoused on the sports field, in the office, during meetings, at home, in bed, and prolifically within the sphere of the televoid.

More to the point, I have 2 online jobs and am completing my second masters program online. I'm enrolling in an MFA in Palm Desert with very low residency (10 days, twice a year in Palm Desert, oh hard times...). My point is that we're moving away from warehousing as a national conception. Let's not forget the concept evolved as a means of military defense both in Revolutionary times, as well as during the Civil War when such practices as compulsory warehousing were mandated.

Less soldiers in the field and folks working from home equates to online public schools regardless of their 'quality'. Fortunately for the online programs, the brick and mortar system has sufficiently deteriorated so it no longer poses a threat by comparison. Also, corporations can run online schools and they can't run the brick and mortar ones (since schwarzengruber's tooth grip is indeed quite as powerful as his foreceps).

Warehousing ceases when the financial pressures that demand it are depleted; this function occurs in correspondence with a smaller privatized military. Reminds me a bit of 'Snow Crash', i.e., General Jim's Defense System and Admiral Bob's National Security. Best regards, Craig! I am an old compadre of Prof. Zepp in Battambang, in case you might know him. sz

[Craig A. Cunningham]

Scott...thank you for your comment. But you seem to forget that one (primary?) purpose of brick and mortar schools is warehousing kids so their parents can work during the day. Online schools won't serve this function.

[SCOTT ZAGORIA]

Perhaps some enlightened inference might assist in this discussion. Firstly, the term educational doping can only refer to contemporary brick and mortar schooling -- in the absence of anything resembling a rapport. One can always walk away from a computer. Synchronous online learning, on the other hand, can carry with it many of the same vapid qualities. I have an M.S. in Online Learning and have just completed my second masters degree online. The dichotomy persists as follows: the successful online schools at every level are operated strictly as corporations...and the students feel the effect. One had might as well be working on Wall Street or be in the army...those are the 2 'successful' online learning platform personae.

Certainly, these 'successful' schools copy brick and mortar schools in every sense. They lack initiative or imagination or discipline to do otherwise. They are not Google and they have no other vision except to process students. So, in short, the differences between online learning as it currently 'exists' and brick and mortar schools. For what it might be worth, my son attends a junior high, 7th and 8th grades, with 800 students...in northern California. Overcrowding is not the issue. The withdrawal of funding from the failed educational enterprise is more the problem. So, we can see that online learning is the future...although most programs are poor, to be honest. They do nothing but collect input and record of student involvement. If you want to know the best legal academic scam there is, try online professor. Canned courses with assignment dates from 3 years prior! No input whatsoever since it's not their job. The truth is that unless students are prepared to use their own initiative to research independently, these courses are WORSE than the correspondence courses of the 1920s. Progress, indeed...

However, the point of all this is that the military and the medical establishment (2 forerunners of things to come in any situation) have both found 'serious games' to be extremely valuable tools. These are virtual environments requiring spontaneous and specific responses...many feature images of injured parties with graphs indicating variable factors. These and the 'stuff' that the military use are already in place and they are of course the future of education. The leap from video games to 'serious games' is a short gap. Technically it will all be 'at hand'...however, prying the academic power from the entrenched state apparatchiks is clearly another issue.

The fight is for money. Online learning is more cost-effective and students often prefer not having to go to school. Lord knows...so, the academic structure is fighting a losing battle and they know it. The administrators make a fair amount of money and they will be out in the cold. So, the lobbyists in California go to work...and Schwarzengruber caves in...and we end up with prohibitive regulations while in Florida one of their online high schools has 40,000 students enrolled across the state!

When the brick and mortar people talk about educational dope, they should know. They've been in the business for quite a while. Dumbing Us Down is already an old book. The next version will be how to dumb us down via the internet. But there is always one difference...when you study online, you don't need a hall pass to go to the bathroom.