Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

8.2.10 | Spotlight talks with gamer Patrick Keller about why gaming should be an integral part of classroom learning and about the new platform he created for the popular video game “Spore.”

“Actually developing games, which is what we want [kids] to do, is a fundamental systems thinking generator,” says Keller, a doctoral student at the University of New Mexico who spent two decades as an English teacher. “Games are systems. Getting kids to think in terms of systems is educational.”

Whether games are designed for fun or more serious learning, “Any kind of game play changes what is happening in the brain,” says Keller. 

Add to that mix serious gaming with exciting content, and educators have a surefire way of drawing them in.

Keller’s “DIASTEM: Digitally Integrating the Academics of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math” recently won a Game Changers Award for a new and creative game play experience that leverages principles of science, technology, engineering and math. The award was part of the 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition. In “DIASTEM,” players work on challenges from simple math and logic puzzles to more complex physics and engineering construction projects. The challenges are designed to help them understand game design theory and application.

In some ways, says Keller, his new game is analogous to traditional modes of education: It encourages student players who don’t complete the challenge to go back and relearn the material they need to know, just like students who get a failing grade should do in a traditional classroom.

But he notes an important difference: “Within traditional and current instruction schemes, a lot of times we forget about the fact that students need to go back and relearn in a different way or in a different mode. So we’re hoping to be able to present that in our game for “Spore”—an environment in which if a student or a user is unable to get to the next stage, there are other ways of getting to that next stage. And we know that they’ve done what they need to do and understand the things that they need to understand to ultimately get that component and use it in a broader context.”

Watch the full interview with Keller above, and check out “DIASTEM” here: