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Education Entertainment Games

Gaming In the Classroom 36

Posted by Zonk from the better-than-a-memorization-table dept.
The Guardian Online has a story describing one reporter's goal to see what role games can play in educational situations. Essentially, he found games being used in many places. The major frustration, in fact, with the games was that they couldn't be used to put forward an educator's goals as often as they would have liked. From the article: "As he says, Sim City has its biases. 'It is geared to traffic and subways. But if it was open source, you could build a model more geared to pedestrians and sidewalks, the urban model advanced by Jane Jacobs, and teach her theories with it.'"
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Gaming In the Classroom More

Gaming In the Classroom

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  • Open Source Sim City? (Score:3, Informative)

    by nocomment ( 239368 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @04:37PM (#12707919) Homepage Journal
    It will never work! [sourceforge.net]

  • Um... (Score:2)

    by yotto ( 590067 )
    So, if you tweak the simulation to produce the results you want it to produce, this is better how?
    • It makes indoctrination of Proper Opinions much, much simpler.

    • So, if you tweak the simulation to produce the results you want it to produce, this is better how?

      The models would demonstrate the theories thus possibly providing a clearer explanation of the theory. It would be up to the instructor and the class to argue which model most accurately resembles reality.

      And the students get the added benefit of learning that "he who frames the argument, wins it" or as I recently heard it phrased, "control the givens, win the argument."

  • Why does it have to be open source? Why can't you build a new sim game from the ground up that has all of the features you want or need?
    • Having an educator build new sim games from the ground up, particularly something with the complexity of even early versions of Sim City, really isn't practical. The Maxis people did a lot of work to figure out what mistakes to avoid in order to get something that's even playable, but your typical K-12 educator, even one who knows how to program interactive apps, just doesn't have the time to do it.

      Tweaking an open source sim game likewise isn't all that practical. How many Social Studies teachers out ther
      • I think this is the key point, it has to be immediately useable by those who may not be super-techy (ie: aforementioned Social Studies teacher).
  • "The New York-based company Tabula Digita is making a 3D game to teach algebra...

    Escape from Castle Algebra? Unreal Number Munchers Tournament III? GTA: Mathmagic Land?

  • ...can become a city planner [slashdot.org] by playing Sim City.
  • I must preface this by saying I am in high school. I am a graduating senior, and will be attending a good school next year. In my experience, gaming in the classroom has been very effective, though it is entirely based on the quality of the gaming. Here are two examples (both of which I worked on, so this is a shameless plug).

    1. EscalationSim [escalationsim.com] - This is a Vietnam war simulation game, or more an interactive interface. However, it allows students to choose their actions and see the reactions in the Vietnam w
    • They preferred the games to traditional instruction - but did they meet the intended learning objectives?

      (This is an honest question. I just got a master's in education and plan to design educational toys in the future - I have a vested interest in knowing whether it worked in your case!)

    • There is only so far that gaming can go on their own to keep kids using what they learn. Teachers do not have the time to be concerned about games when they are getting pressed to meet academic goals that are unreachable with the idiots that are in schools. THe middle school my son goes to purposely teaches only what is necessary to meet the lowest acceptable level for Math for the state because most of the students could not pass anything higher and the teacher may need to work harder to teach it. Back
  • The problem is that you usually have to choose between better gameplay, or a more factual interpretation. This is going to always be the case in any sort of game, because the real world is complicated and has a lot of difficult problems.

    Simcity has its biases because there's only so much time to program, only so much computing power to simulate stuff, and only so much complexity that a player can deal with and still have any fun.

    I think there's more of a difference between a "game" and a "simulator" than
    • That's not entirely true, it's just that educators and computer programming have basically been sitting at different lunch tables for the past decade.

      Games are great at making drills bearable. Drills are a valid part of an education, just ask your math teacher. Problem is that it becomes much more difficult to use computer programs to teach at higher levels of thinking. There's a hierarchy of learning I've seen that's probably pretty accurate, and what it basically says is that drills are the lowest form o
  • Gee says this only works "when the curriculum into which the game is built is a good one. Games, like textbooks, do nothing or less than nothing when they are not used well."

    Although the article uses this only talking about the use of commercial games in the classroom, it's every bit as true about games designed to be educational.

    And it's not just the curriculum - it's the teacher as well. A kid can play SimCity for weeks, but at the end of it not be able to verbalize in any constructive way what he le

  • Oregon Trail!
    How that game managed to dominate the classroom scene of the 80's, from green/black Apple IIe to full-color Mac, I will never know. Maybe it's because there was nothing like the thrill of getting to shoot some buffalo during computer lab. Did anyone ever actually beat that game? I'm pretty sure my family always drowned/died of syphillis/got eaten by cannibals/however you died in that game. Maybe it was just my impatient, sadistic childhood nature because I'd always tell the horses to try and

    • I don't think you could win the apple II version. However the IIgs version was trivial to win, even on hard. (though at the end of winning I noticed that I crossed the mountains in January - in other words I won because the game was nothing close to realistic)

  • Here is a list of games that I compiled from a previous and very exaustive slashdot discussion thought were educational. I haven't played most of them, so some may have more educational merit than others. Sim City Sim Ant* Sim Tower Sim Farm Sim Earth** Sim Safari The Incredible Machine Contraptions Chromatron (puzzle) Enigmo [pangeasoft.net]* Zoo Tycoon Roller Coaster Tycoon Transport Tycoon w/ [ttdpatch.net]** Railroad Tycoon Test Drive Celestia [shatters.net]* Noctis [anywherebb.com] Orbit [head-crash.c
  • Typing of the Dead.
  • I remember playing simcity as a lab assignment in a college economic geography course. And this was years and years ago.
  • Myst [cyanworlds.com] any of them will provide a great mental challenge. while it wont teach students facts, it helps develop problem solving and analytical skills. The best for the classroom would have to by Myst3:Exile by Presto Studios, its not too difficult and looks wonderful.
  • I really learned a lot of historical facts while playing civilization, by reading the descriptions about civilization advances and wonders in the "civilopedia", but I suppose that not all students playing this game would be willing to do that, unless doing so would have a benefitial effect in gameplay (maybe including tactics as how to use a military unit or when to build a city improvement).
    Anyway, I think this kind of games can be really educational, althought not everyone enjoys playing them, so I guess
  • I'm not saying the whole game, but the start of the Russian campaign with the battle for Stalingrad is unbelieveable. I knew from history class back lo those many years ago that the battle of Stalingrad was a meat grinder for the Russian army, but that level hammered home on an emotional level just how bloody awful it was. The supply shortages, the Comissars reinforcing Stalin's "Not one step backward" directive at the point of a machinegun, etc. That to me brought home how that battle must have been lik

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