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Congress Slashes Funding for Peaceful Conflict Resolution Game
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue May 20, 2008 03:53 PM
from the how-are-our-children-supposed-to-become-warriors-with-this dept.
from the how-are-our-children-supposed-to-become-warriors-with-this dept.
In a departure from the usual video game setting a recent educational video game called "Cool School" was designed to teach kids peaceful conflict resolution. Unfortunately Congress has decided to slash the funding of this program that has been receiving rave reviews from the testers at schools in Illinois. "Cool School focuses on taking players through a school where just about everything (desks, books, and other objects) are alive and have their own personality. Over the course of ten levels and over 50 different situations designed by Professor Melanie Killen and then-doctoral student Nancy Margie (both of the University of Maryland). The primary goal of the game is to teach students how to solve social conflict through skills like negotiation and cooperation. During the title's development, Killen and Margie were able to work with some talented members of the video game industry, including independent developer F.J. Lennon and animator Dave Warhol." The game is now available as a free download and will play on both Mac OS X and Windows XP.
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Funding slashed for a finished game (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks slashdot, for providing no link to the article where the funding is being slashed, just two links to a game and people's reviews of it.
Re:Funding slashed for a finished game (Score:5, Informative)
That's also what's holding back Duke Nukem Forever, I suppose.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Although TFA [arstechnica.com] is somewhat vague on the point, it seems the problem is not quite that trivial.
(emphasis mine)
Re:Funding slashed for a finished game (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the problem is as trivial as he said; it's just that the original plan seems to have been much more grandiose. Come to think of it, if they *had* gotten the funding to send a DVD to every school in the country, wouldn't we be getting a story long the lines of "Congress Doesn't Know Internet Exists!!!", with pages of moronic comments about "tubes"?
I don't get the GGP's complaint about Ars Technica, though. It's not the article's fault that it's not mostly about the one sentence the editor fixated on.
Parent
Re:Funding slashed for a finished game (Score:4, Funny)
Really? I heard that Peaceful Conflict Resolution accelerators simply weren't fast enough for Duke's "Resolutions."
Parent
Re:Funding slashed for a finished game (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To 'sell' it to schools, you need to a) make them aware of it, usually by presenting at state teacher's fairs and putting notices in periodicals, b) indicate how it supports curricula standards by providing support material and metrics, c) get it into existing channels so the (usual sole) IT person at the school (typically a resource/library person) is allowed to install it, d) support
Damn! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, of course. (Score:2, Flamebait)
Mission Accomplished!
The Article... (Score:2, Informative)
...is on ars technica [arstechnica.com].
Negotiators? (Score:2)
Ha ha (Score:3, Insightful)
no funding? (Score:3, Funny)
I tried it out (Score:5, Informative)
Game-wise, it's nothing special. It's a flash based game with limited user interaction, less than exceptional graphical content, and it plays at 800x600 regardless of your resolution - no full screen capability. In their defense, most games targetting my kids show the same properties.
In the five minutes I played, I was able to click maybe 4 times, with the remainder of the time spent listening to the characters walk me through the game. The general idea they are trying to get across - building conflict resolution skills - is very apparent. I think my child will enjoy this game - although I think she won't choose it very often over other games that she has available such as Dora or Care Bears titles. Frankly, I think the commercial titles offer a much more clear educational experience, but that's not to say I don't like the game at all.
Personally - I think community developed games like those built with Scratch [mit.edu] have a much brighter future. Lord knows how many tax dollars were spent on this game, and if you had 5 involved parents working together for a month and a half, you could have something much better and more open to derivative updates.
Scratch is still flash, but at least you have the ability to update games developed with it - and tailor them to your specific needs/target audience.
Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Additionally, if this line was to mean congress could do anything not explicitly forbidden by the first 9 amendments, there would be no need for the 10th amendment whi
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They shouldn't have to give away the source code, and it shouldn't "have" to be inter-operable with linux. It is made for schools, and over 95% of schools run windows. Optimizing it so it runs in wine (which it probably does, its not a graphically-complex game) would have cost money, and had very little in returns.
Now get off your linux soapbox and learn that the real world doesn't revolve around your chosen operating system.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Really.... (Score:4, Funny)
Wow.
Also in true /. style, I didn't read your whole comment, but I saw something in there about "governed" and "WINE" and you made no mention of "legalized". Frankly I think the US Government has no right to prohibit alcohol sales.
Parent
Re:Really.... (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously, someone running Linux or other F/OSS OS doesn't need a game to understand the advantages of cooperation or peaceful conflict resolution. Kernel, license or editor conflicts almost never devolve into physical violence.
How fun would an appropriate game be?
"Mark doesn't agree with your indentation style. What do you do?"
a) Create my own fork
b) Develop software that will display the code in the viewers indent style
c) I demonstrate my indentation preference by indenting Marks face with my fist
d) I write my own new software with a new license allowing only derivative works with the same indentation style
Parent
Re:Really.... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, 'Hitman' was a game too, you know.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Congress isn't using war/oil money to fund video games. And in any case it's taxpayer money.
It's all "taxpayer money". So what? That's what a tax is - they take your money. It's not yours anymore.
Video games are a medium, like anything else. The point of this project was to try to use that medium to teach - now, there may be numerous reasons this is not a great idea (the fact that kids play games because they're fun, for instance, combined with a game whose primary goal is not to entertain but to teach - the fact that technology changes so fast that the game may have a short practical lifespa