Here are a few quotes from the GLS conference for your consideration. They struck me at some subterranian level and I’m not sure why. I suspect that there may be something important to us, or maybe not.
What do you think?
Art is easy to specify, but expensive to product!
Programming is easy to product, but hard to specify!
We’ve established at the conference that we don’t have to ask, “do kids learn in video games?” What we’re interested in is “how do kids learn?”
There’s probably more learning theory involved in the commercial games than the training simulations. — Karl Royle
As a fellow attendee at the GLS conference, I am intrigued a bit by the second quote. It seems as if we are all video game converts here but are struggling with how to implement the idea of gaming in a practical way. I had several conversations yesterday (Kurt Squire, Mia Consalvo) that focused on the actual learning environment and not just the way that games impact the brain.
As my own brain tries to wrap around the problem of gaming in a “traditional†school setting, I am slowly becoming convinced that it may not be possible to integrate complex gaming into a regular school day. Perhaps more after school clubs, weekend classes, independent student courses or some sort of online instruction that kids can access.
Another conversation some of my colleagues and I are having is the concept of training teachers in quality game design rather than the actual use of games. We know why games work so well (unstructured problems, coop learning, multimedia elements, etc) and need to get teachers to use these design elements as they plan their “traditional†instruction.
Curious what others are thinking about working in and out of the regular system.
(Another great quote: “We all use cheat codes! What is a cookbook but a great walkthrough?†Deborah Field)
Glenn Wiebe
ESSDACK
Hutchinson, KS
“Perhaps more after school clubs, weekend classes, independent student courses or some sort of online instruction that kids can access.”
cough, cough, libraries, cough, cough….
keeping an eye out for you, David 🙂
Having been in charge of both art and programming in game development, the first set of quotes doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Art is expensive, sure, but isn’t easy to specify at all. There are never enough words to describe how something you’ve never seen before should look.
And programming isn’t easy, since in games, you are often inventing something that does not exist, or is pushing the envelope of current knowledge of how the technology works, and you are just hoping that you can figure it out along the way. It often feels like you are simultaneously building a train and laying track as your train flies along at top speed.