Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

10.24.06 | (This is part I—the follow up explores an important flip-side.)

Many good video games (e.g., my current favorite Okami; see game site) offer players a virtual world formed out of problems to be solved (for more, see my 2003 book).  The player is immersed in experience, but with guidance built into the very design of the game and with tools to help. 

Games often have lots of words, but they give verbal information “just in time” and “on demand” and they relate meanings to images, actions, experiences, and dialogue—not just “definitions” and other texts—so players can apply their knowledge, not just talk about it. 

Good games often make both collaboration and competition integral to problem solving.  They often require team work where each player is an expert, but also must understand other team members’ skills and be able to coordinate and integrate with them.

Games have lots of content, but they “teach” it by giving players strong identities, goals, and tools that allow them to understand and solve problems, learning the content as they go.  The focus is on goals and problems, not facts and information for their own sake. 

Yet many people think games are trivial and schools are serious when it comes to learning.  The work we are doing for MacArthur (see here and here) is dedicated not to games per se, but to this sense of game-like pedagogy.