Learning Links
Filed at 8:42 am on September 21, 2009 • Leave a comment
SMALLab and Quest to Learn featured in story on games and academic learning.
“Games are what kids do,” says Katie Salen in a recent piece in Education Week. “It’s this deeply imaginative space that kids love.”
Salen is taking advantage of this enthusiasm with Quest to Learn—a New York City school she has designed and developed with the Institute of Play and New Visions for Public Schools. Quest to Learn is based around game design and game-inspired teaching methods.
Salen tells edweek that Quest to Learn students will take part in “missions”—equivalent to a unit or class—that are broken down into smaller “quests,” or lessons. Quest to Learn will also make use of simulation technology like the mixed reality tool SMALLab. [See this week’s Grasping Math and Science, Literally]
SMALLab’s David Birchfield tells edweek that students who use the mixed reality platform have shown statistically significant gains in their overall comprehension of subject matter.
The tool uses digital simulation technology to teach academic concepts. Like the Wii, students and teachers interact with digital elements via full body movements and gestures in real 3D space.
The article points to a “growing movement” in schools to incorporate digital media into classrooms to increase learning, and interviews teachers and students about their experience using the technology.
“It’s definitely more engaging than regular class,” says one educator… “And it’s a really good outlet for [the students] because it allows them to act out some of the information that they know by moving around in the space.”
Birchfield tells edweek that SMALLab’s researchers and developers work closely with teachers to develop curriculum in conjunction with the technology itself.
Experts say that one of the strengths of this technology is that games tend to promote higher-level kinds of thinking, like problem-solving and critical thinking, instead of just factual knowledge.
But they also caution not to believe the technology will be a “silver bullet.” Before using it, they say, educators should be asking whether games can help address specific classroom and learning challenges.
Read the full article here.
SMALLab is a new physical platform for learning being designed at Arizona State University. Quest to Learn is a new 6-to-12th grade public school in New York City designed to support the digital lives of young people and their capacity for learning. Both projects are supported by the MacArthur Foundation.
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