NPR Looks at How NYC Games School is Teaching Systems Thinking
7.1.10 | Heather Chaplin interviewed Katie Salen on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” this week about how Quest to Learn, a new public charter school in New York City, is using game-based learning to build 21st-century literacy skills. The school has just completed its first year.
Salen, the school’s executive director of design, says building the school around video games has given students the ability to practice the multifaceted thinking necessary in today’s world.
“Systems thinking,” she says, “gives you a tool to manage complexity. Because of the complexity of problems, if you’re not able to look at them as a system, you’re just going to look at a blur. You will just be overwhelmed by the complexity.”
Salen says the school was designed to mimic the learning that takes place during game play – it is collaborative, inquiry based, and supports experimentation.
For example, in the NPR story – one Quest to Learn student describes how his sixth-grade class is learning math and English in an imaginary city called “Creepytown.”
Students role play as travel agents, convert currencies, write blogs about their travel experiences and go through budgeting exercises. They receive “missions” and must overcome obstacles before advancing to the next level.
“The second trimester, Creepytown went broke,” Salen says. “They had ... an economic crisis. So the kids worked to figure out ... what had gone wrong. And then they proposed the design of a theme park to bring revenue in.”
Salen talks more about the philosophy behind the school in this video podcast at Spotlight, including the similarities between the way game designers work and the way that good teachers work.
Interestingly, some listeners who commented on NPR’s website were concerned about too much screen time for kids and that technology may be negatively affecting students’ ability to learn to read and write. Josh Karp explored the issue in this Spotlight story, “Does Digital Media Make us Bad Writers?”
Chaplin notes that applications for slots in Quest to Learn for the fall are way up. You can listen to the full story on NPR’s website.
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