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Education Entertainment Games

Teachers Using Computer Games in Class 81

Posted by Zonk
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on the ways in which games are gaining acceptance in the classroom. From the article: 'Teachers across the country are bringing certain games into their schools as a way to pique students' interest in everything from history and politics to physical fitness and music theory. Among the most popular are Firaxis Games Inc.'s Civilization games, Take2's Railroad Tycoon, and Dance Dance Revolution.'"
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Teachers Using Computer Games in Class More

Teachers Using Computer Games in Class

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  • Stock Exchange (Score:4, Interesting)

    by foundme ( 897346 ) on Monday February 13, 2006 @02:53PM (#14709763) Homepage
    One of our lecturers asked us to participate in a stock exchange game [xmoo.com], and had the nerve to bet that we wouldn't do well.

    Sure enough we did well, mainly because we students as one big syndicate is simply too powerful in term of market manipulation, and the fact that one is more risk-taking with fake money. So I guess we did learn something out of it.
    • I'm sure there's plenty of other programmers on this site. . . did anyone else get that e-mail from MS about some programming competition where you can win an XB360 or a Palm Pilot? Something about making AI for a game if I understand it.

      It sounds sorta cool, but I'm not sure I'll have much time with all my other extracurriculars and school.

  • Not New (Score:5, Insightful)

    by warmgun ( 669556 ) on Monday February 13, 2006 @02:53PM (#14709765)
    How is the news? I recall playing Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Odell Lake around 15 years ago!

    • Re:Not New (Score:3, Informative)

      by jchenx ( 267053 )
      I believe the difference is that those games, I believe, we designed to be "edutainment" titles, and the games that TFA is referring to are mainstream titles (Civ III, DDR, and Railroad Tycoon).
      • I believe the difference is that those games, I believe, we designed to be "edutainment" titles, and the games that TFA is referring to are mainstream titles (Civ III, DDR, and Railroad Tycoon).

        If you use the Civilopedia, Civ can be very educational. Also, most of these games (except maybe DDR) require some degree of strategy & complex thought. Even DDR would be good for phys ed classes if you needed to motivate students, or maybe for kindergarten classes if you're trying to tire them out :-)

        • DDR in its current form is far too difficult for children that young. I could see a market for a DDR-knockoff tailored to the needs of very young players working out well, though....
    • Yeah, and I recall playing Lemonade Stand in 1982.
      • Oh, yeah? I had a teacher who used to bring in his TRS-80 from home and we'd get to play games like Wumpus and Hammurabi in 1979...

        Actually, he had a great system back then. If you got top marks on a quiz or other assignment, you got a stamp. On days he brought the computer in, you could exchange 3 stamps for 5 minutes of computer time.
    • Oh, and don't forget the incredible machine!!!
    • At the school I work for, one teacher had me (school tech) install several games onto his machine. He used them as 'rewards' for students who did well in the class. I thought it was stupid, but the principal seemed to like the idea and made me do it anyways.
    • Educational software circa 1985:

      You have died
      --little wagon--
      of dysentery.

      Educational software circa 2005:

      The villagers have given you the secret of a new Technology!
  • They'd learn a great deal more -- about censorship, lobbying, and how crazy adults really are -- if the teach let 'em play San Andreas instead...
  • By way of example, if the object of a game was to teach Euclidean geometry, at what level of abstraction would such a game fail to entertain? If the 'game' was comprised of merely shapes allowing for extrapolation to Euclidean principles then I doubt the 'game' would hold a players interest. If the game were akin to something like Quake with the concepts of Euclidean geometry tied directly into winning strategy then players might learn to quickly implement the principles and deduce tactics.

    Sound might be tr

    • Do the storyline, sound and imagery have to be heroic and embedded in the players mythos before the game is entertaining and entrains the player?

      I don't know. Do you consider "Firaxis Games Inc.'s Civilization games, Take2's Railroad Tycoon, and Dance Dance Revolution" to have heroic sound and imagery, embedded in the "player's mythos"? I'm not entirely certain what you mean by that last one (multiple ideas come to mind)... but I'm pretty sure the answer is no.

      Your first paragraph was somewhat interesting,
    • I can't find the website for it right now, but at the University of Southern California, one lab has created a driving game where the speed of your driving and other variables control the volume, speed, and other properties of the music you're "playing." The track you drive on is created such that, for instance, turns appear where the music should slow down. It's a way to give performers a sense of which passages could be performed in a certain way.
    • The goal of an educational game isn't necessarily the same as traditional, commercial games. For instance, many game publishers strive for long-term playability, others for re-playability, and finally others for spin-off generation. An educational game doesn't need to hold the player's interest for 90+ hours to be useful - some concepts you could learn in just a few hours of playing.

      I "played" a Japanese kanji game in high school that taught you recognition skills. You'd play for 15 minutes and your brain f
      • I "played" a Japanese kanji game in high school that taught you recognition skills. You'd play for 15 minutes and your brain felt fried, but the result was that I became quite good at picking out kanji based on their individual characteristics (radicals, for anyone familiar with kanji).

        Is it, or something like it, still available? That sounds like something I could burn a few hours on.

    • If the 'game' was comprised of merely shapes allowing for extrapolation to Euclidean principles then I doubt the 'game' would hold a players interest.

      Now if the shapes have 4 squares to them, and the object is to get 10 squares in a row...

  • Lazy teaching! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Max Threshold ( 540114 ) on Monday February 13, 2006 @03:07PM (#14709911)
    Sounds like lazy teaching to me. I don't know about everybody else, but the one day a week I got to spend half an hour playing Oregon Trail never piqued my interest in anything except slacking off.

    • Re:Lazy teaching! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by trazom28 ( 134909 )
      Maybe you learned something and didn't realize it.. ala passive learning. Yeah, you had fun playing Oregon Trail.. but didn't know you were learning planning, strategy, money management..
    • Yeah, I remember computer time in school mostly being time for the teacher to either do nothing, or catch up on marking assignments. Most of the students sat around and talked, and didn't even bother playing the game. Those that did play were the ones who would have been doing the work regardless of whether or not it was a computer game. I think that teachers should just stick with the tried and true methods of teaching, and stop trying to push technology into the classroom where it isn't needed.
      • Even without huge numbers of computers in the classroom it is easiest to learn about markets and politics through simulations rather than lectures. Almost every intro to finance class has a here's why markets work example that involves the students splitting onto teams and trading.
        • But why do you need a computer game to do this. If you do the trading yourselves, you learn more of what actually goes on behind the scenes than if you buy some stuff on a computer screen and watch it go up and down.
          • Trading sure, those are most interesting live (that's why traders are so hesitant to give up open outcry trading). But you cannot simulate say bank/interest rate risk managment without a computer model. The stanford bank game (don't let the game fool you it's not something most people would sit down for a few rounds of) is an example of a pretty accurate model of a specialized type of business, yeah some numbers go up and down, but it's multiplayer and competitive even if some of the numbers are semi-rand

    • Re:Lazy teaching! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Fallingcow ( 213461 )
      Speak for yourself, my experience with the Total War series (specifically Rome and Medieval) just saved my ass on the geography portion of a French civ. test. Well, that and my knowledge of the two world wars ;)

      A game called Shadow President (plus good ol' board games like Risk) taught me tons about politics, war, geography, and history. I played that thing for hours.

      Darklands, a game that I used to play and that I recently re-discovered (mmm, DosBox emulation) has tons to teach the player about life and
      • FYI, there was a sequel to Shadow President called Cyber Judas. If I remember correctly, it was a pretty decent game as well.
      • I read my first words in SimCity 2000.

      • Re:Lazy teaching! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Max Threshold ( 540114 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @12:35AM (#14713868)
        So in other words, you learned shallow and fictionalized versions of the above. Well, good. At least you're in good company.
        • So in other words, you learned shallow and fictionalized versions of the above. Well, good. At least you're in good company.

          Hah!

          Obviously, games aren't the only things one should get one's information from.

          However, screwing around in good ol' Encarta '95 and a playing a few games that just happened to teach some stuff, too, allowed me to ace every history/social studies/geography test I had throughout grade school. I knew most of the material before the teachers got to it. I also read a lot about those so
  • Where I went to elementary school in California, we had a GATE (gifted and talented education) program which was used to ensure any kid with decent grades from becoming disinterested and totally clocking out of school (which I guess was considered a rational fear at the time). The three activities I remember us doing the most in our one hour of separation from other students were working on logic puzzles, playing Oregon Trail, and playing Sim City. Those were wonderful days.

    While I don't imagine I'll be tre

    • Re:Old news to me...at least 10 years old. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pilkul ( 667659 ) on Monday February 13, 2006 @04:26PM (#14710705)
      kid with decent grades from becoming disinterested and totally clocking out of school (which I guess was considered a rational fear at the time)

      You laugh, but this is actually a serious problem. This study [nagc.org] estimates that 25% of American gifted and talented students drop out of high school. Our lowest-common-denominator school system ensures that people with much more potential become demotivated and waste their chances.

    • we had a GATE (gifted and talented education) program which was used to ensure any kid with decent grades from becoming disinterested and totally clocking out of school (which I guess was considered a rational fear at the time

      I note that the "gifted" program at your school was designed to take students who had advanced beyond the level of work the teacher wanted the class to be doing. It removed potentially bored (and therefore disruptive) students from the class to make life easier for the teachers. What

    • Where I went to elementary school in California, we had a GATE (gifted and talented education) program which was used to ensure any kid with decent grades from becoming disinterested and totally clocking out of school (which I guess was considered a rational fear at the time).

      It is a rational fear, period (and may be overrated as well.) Gifted students are "ahead" enough of the pack that basic high-school education is merely educating what they've already learned - and in some cases, is counterproductive

  • One of my housemates is doing graduate work in education. We've spent a while theorizing how to use a MMORPG with a working player driven economy (like Puzzle Pirates / http://www.puzzlepirates.com/ [puzzlepirates.com] ) as a teaching aid. We are pretty certain that with the right sort of guidance, a MMORPG could be the ultimate teaching tool for group interactions (like economics). We came to this conclusion after he saw me giving officer training to a new officer in which I was sitting and explaining economic theory so th
    • If you could write an AI that would do a good job of model real markets, would you waste you time releasing it as part of a game, or would you go after the big bucks and sell it on Wall Street or in Chicago?

      I agree that playing a market game against other people (where everyone is trying to do well) is a good way to teach about markets and how they really work.

    • Selling a merch brig on Midnight ocean. 2k under market value.

      On a serious note, do you like/dislike the new treasure drop format?
  • I remember convincing my grade school administration to buy and use "Colonization" and "Civilization I" as teaching applications. Then I sat down with my Grade 7 teacher and proceeded to play the game. Of course, this was back when the school's new allotment of 386's were the top of the line.
  • I've had SOME success in getting my game:
    http://www.democracygame.com/ [democracygame.com]
    used in some politics courses, but it's been very hard work, despite the fact that the teachers and students who sue it think its a great learning tool.
    Theres no simple way to promote a product like a video game for use in schools accross the US, or if there is, I can't find it. I'm sure the likes of EA or Microsoft can get the attention of federal educators, but anyone know how the little guy gets his foot in the door?
    • You go through educational organization such as mine: http://cte.jhu.edu/ [jhu.edu]

      I am actually working on a Federal Grant on using games in the classroom. Most of my focus is on Math and Reading but as a former government teacher I can tell you I played your game and found it good. There are two major hurdles you will find in getting a game into an American classroom.

      1. Price
      2. Educational Standards

      The first is a very complicated topic that isn't worth going into on Slashdot. The second is an issue I can explain
    • The political system is proportional representation and its assumed there is only one opposing party.

      First of all, this is unrealistic. If you are trying to sell this to Americans, they don't grasp "proportional representation" (although it would be a good idea!) They do understand "first past the post". Also, there *is* more than one opposing party, although I concede that Americans do act like there is only one. In Europe, however, exactly the opposite is true.

      Setting up your game the way you h

      • Thankyou for this excellent feedback. The two-party thing is a total fudge, but its a deliberate design decision in order to keep the focus on policies rather than electoral math. There are other games that specialise purely on the election process, whereas I wanted to get involved way more with the issues, and the compromises required to achieve balance.
        Maybe my website needs redoing. I think I'll have a look at some website templates. Its good to get someone 'outside' to give a warts and all opinion of it
  • I seem to remember some stories that having more computers in the classroom decreases the amount of learning being done. I can't help but wonder why it is that my generation that still had to 'learn' things the way our grandfathers did score better then current generations who learn things through fun. Except that tests show they do not actually learn as much as we did.

    We all heard the joke about current education that is more worried about how the kid feels then about getting proper answers. "What is 2+2

    • Or put another way, if you manage to 'learn' something from Civ 1-4 or Railroad Tycoon then your education must have truly sucked.

      The idea is that these games are being used with kids who are still undergoing their education. I know that when I was 7 or 8 and playing the original Civilization, I was definitely hearing for the first time about the ancient 'Wonders' of the world.

    • Anyway should education be fun? If so for how long? I seen kids fresh from school who were totally incapable of dealing with real life. No you can't just take a sickday. No you can't skip a meeting like you skip a class.

      I don't want everyone to think I'm just some kind of starry-eyed hippie, but have you considered that maybe the world we're creating isn't the one we really want to live in? By setting up the expectation that we have to be enslaved by our work, we create that future for ourselves.

      I,

    • Anyway should education be fun? If so for how long?Yes. For your entire life. Granted, not all education is fun. You can learn a lot from mistakes and painful situations. But if you ask some of the world's most brilliant people why they decided to learn whatever it is they specialized in, they will often say "Because it's fun!"
  • I'm not against refined versions of these games making into schools. But come one Civ? It would take days explaining and doing the basics of it before you got into the game. To truely get some of it, you'd need to play the game 4-5 times as several different POVs. If they could get versions of Civ, SimCity, SimEarth, and maybe Sims combined with HomeEcon designed to be played in 10-15 mins. Then I could see it. But these games are designed for one person to spend hours on to weeks on. I'd agree that there a
    • I think mostly you'd use the editor and set up scenarios ahead of time depicting real-world events. Of course, civ isn't sufficiently detailed to provide a very good simulation (you can build wooden ships even if you don't have any forests) but for illustrating certain principles it could be very useful.

      Incidentally, I started playing civ when I was 14 or so, and it only took me a few games before I could beat the computer on easy, without reading any documentation, and without even watching a complete ga

  • ...you mean with the students.

    Silly me, I thought this was about the teachers playing tetris while the kids are doing worksheets.
  • Speaking AS a school teacher and computer game design contractor, saying that using games in a classroom is a minefield of an activity doesn't begin to cover the extent of the problem. Pros and cons? Got a month? Here's a few:

    Pros

    Engage students who are not responsive to "lecture and discuss" format (kinesthetic learners, especially, or children who have traditionally grown up on electronic media)...

    Alternative to traditional assessment methods - fresh approaches promote more vigorous response...

    Tech

    • "Will they work as a large-scale adoption technique for schools across the nation? Never... that is, until a large-scale societal shift happens in viewpoints about how much money should be spent on education, and how much freedom teachers should be given to use it."

      Which is the goal of an organization such as mine http://cte.jhu.edu/ [jhu.edu].

      The main grant that I am working on is the effective use of games in the classroom. As you said in your post, the potential is there. As technology and teachers who grew up p

    • Few game companies/publishers are willing to give up product for free/cheap (sadly, I have personal experience here) even for publicity

      The free software community would be glad to help.

  • This is hardly a new phenomenon. Although, I discovered that the easiest way to beat Oregon Trail was to start off with no food, starve out the rest of your party so you're the only one left, then buy some food at the next stop, and it's smooth sailing from there!

    I'm not sure what lesson that taught me. :P
  • I know from my own experience, playing games in the Total War series have piqued my interest in history and ancient combat. Of course, knowledge of hoplites and chariot archers is pertinent to the modern age. Another good history game is Europa Universalis (and its successor, EU2). Granted, these games are probably too high on the learning curve, so I'd opt for the old standbys of Civilization and SimCity (and SimEarth and SimAnt and the other Sim* games).

  • I know several teachers who use NationStates [nationstates.net] in class. Funnily enough I'm also aware of many schools who ban us outright.

    We got so many enquiries from teachers that we made a special page for them [nationstates.net].

  • Not many people know this but Mario secretly doubled as a teacher for a short while. http://www.nesretro.com/mariohistory/images/MarioT eachesTyping.jpg [nesretro.com] Also, this is a real game that was for the PC for those who can't believe it.
  • Europa Universalis 2 would be my pick for worthwhile classroom use. Many of the playable countries have an extensive set of "historical events" which are accurate for that country, and allow the player to make choices, but also say what, historically, actually happened and the result.

    Since the game covers the world 1419-1815 there is a lot of stuff going on, and plenty of learning opportunities. Also, along with actual lessons on world history, it lets students see that history is not an inevitable monolit

  • I played a game at school called (I think) Kingdom. It was on the BBC Micro.

    The game was quite simple, in that you had a certain number of villagers. Each year, you had to set a certain number to work the fields, some to mind the dam, and some to guard. Then you clicked enter to see what happened.

    If you didn't have enough field workers, there would be starvation, if not enough were set as guards, then there would be a bandit raid. If the dam wasn't maintained, there would be a flood, and blocky yellow wate

  • Back in my day, we had those worksheets that you had to get all the solutions to to spell out the answer to a riddle. They were fun enough that most kids would give it a good go...

    Now get off my lawn!

  • James Paul Gee [cgpublisher.com] has written several times on how video games are generally good for us, and are better at teaching that our current school systems. His book "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" has been extremely well-received among the learning community. [amazon.com]

    Note: I work for Common Ground, the publisher of a couple of his works, including his latest "Why Video Games are Good for Your Soul."
  • Nathan Garrelts, a professor at my college, is trying to work video games into the curriculum by discussing their cultural dynamics and examining them as literary works. He wrote an excellent article [igda.org] called "Will Master Chief Ever Frag Moby Dick?" for the International Game Developers Association. He has also edited a collection of essays [allbookstores.com] on how digital media influences our perceptions, and how our perceptions influence how we interact with digital media. I wrote an article about him [svsu.edu] for our newspaper back
  • Well firstly, there was that Tetris game I had on my Casio CFX-9850G graphics calculator :)
    But there were also various games (Grannys Garden comes to mind) on the BBC micros they had at primary school. Then they got macs.
    Plus all the people playing Chuck Yeagers Air Combat on the macs at high school and the people playing a mario rip-off on the PCs.
  • This reminds me of this story [everything2.com] written by someone who works at an activity center for kids aged 10-14 in Denmark. His belief (formed by direct experience) is that video games, notably RPGs, help not with learning math or history, but with something much more important...how to work with others as a team and get to know eachother as equals, rather than "bullies" or "nerds."

    From the article on teamwork:

    They began asking for - and offering - help, and they learned that the best person for a job is not al

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