iterativelearning

There has been lots happening on the education-video games front for quite some time now (James Paul Gee, Marc Prensky, AECT Virtual Educators, Educause Virtual Worlds). While all this research is helpful towards connecting the practice to relevant theory(ies), sometimes, teachers just want to dive in and explore what these games are all about. What are they like from an experiential perspective? Or very simply, what is it like to play the darn things?

Well, one option is Penn State University’s Gaming library that offers quite a few. For example, in the Environmental Science category, there is Operation Climate Control; moving more towards the Humanities end of the spectrum, there is The Playhouse which centers on Shakespeare. The game titles I saw were developed in Flash, so you can experiment with them directly in the browser. They’ve also got a page with additional resources on gaming (e.g., development tools, showcase), plus plenty more if you have the time.

Was glad to read in Henry Jenkins’ post of a PBS production on New Media and video games that gets away from an old, sky-is-falling perspective, namely one that envisions the relationship between kids and video games as a precipitous downward spiral. I like the way Jenkins puts it in terms of whose power of expression has been the most dominant and how this has reinforced such a belief.

In most cases, a bias towards the adult perspectives offered by parents and teachers over those advanced by young people, who often lacked a language through which to defend experiences which were clearly meaningful to them

I see an an interesting opportunity for instructional designers. Teachers could integrate a writing component where students, perhaps in small groups, draft an argument that lays out the case for the educational benefits they perceive in their interactions with this New Media and/or video game(s). Students could also extend this articulation through oral presentations.

Technorati Tags:
Henry Jenkins, PBS