Are you ready? Bill Gates says that game-based learning is the future of education.
He has a dream. A dream of children sitting around and playing games on their computers or their iPads or their Whatevers.
They will be wearing galvanic skin response monitor bracelets, or they will have a little chip in their heads to measure their level of excitement, and they will be excited all the time.
Every classroom–if there are classrooms–will buzz with their excitement. Little and big squeals of sheer joy as they blast off and shoot the intruder or blow away somebody else’s avatar or compete to win the most points.
They will be so excited that they won’t want to go home. They won’t want to read a book.
They will need half a gram of soma to calm down, to become calm enough to leave the classroom of the future where they have spent the entire day in play and gaming.
Just a question: Why does he get to do this to our children? Why doesn’t he use his own children as guinea pigs first?
Another question: Why do education leaders listen to him?
Games-based education can mean many things, it’s not necessarily sitting around the classroom playing video games (although there can be a lot of educational value in doing so). The current Open Badges project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation and Mozilla, is an excellent example of taking one aspect of gamification (badges) and rethinking a piece of our current educational system.
Our 30% national drop-out rates let us know the “old ways” aren’t really all that great. I’m all for exploring alternatives to engage and learn. As a former professor at Boise State University, we taught over 15 graduate courses in Second Life using avatars with teachers from around the world, and were some of the most powerful educational experiences I’ve ever encountered. We often received course evaluations with comments such as, “I was totally engaged and see a new light for education,” and “This course has changed my life and thinking about the future of learning.” Think of simulated environments as a 3D form of online learning, as opposed to 2D online text and media based learning like you might experience in Blackboard or Moodle.
I don’t know you personally, Diane, but I’d be happy to chat about aspects of GBL and gamification, and show you the research evidence that shows they ARE making an educational difference in engagement, educational persistence, and increase in grades. Thank you for listening.
A few things:
(1) I believe that nuance has become an endangered concept in this age of online polemic: ignorance forestalls nuance; stupidity forbids it.
As wonderful as the internet is as a vast information source it also allows us to pick-n-choose our sources with an all-too-common result of avoiding exposure to the underlying issue(s) or countervailing opinions. It is incumbent upon ourselves to seek out those “other” sources in order to appreciate the nuance of the issue.
(2) In the linked article, Bill Gates said “(w)e’re not saying the whole curriculum turns into this big game. We’re saying it’s an adjunct to a serious curriculum.”
However, this blog post indicates that “Bill Gates says that game-based learning is the future of education” which seems somewhat disingenuous given the quote above. I feel that this is the type of hyperbole that (although eye-catching) only serves to create a greater divide. Based on the linked article a more apt lede might be: “Bill Gates says that game-based learning has a role in the future of education.”
(3) I also believe that it would be helpful to discuss how best to define “game.” When I was a student one of my favorite activities was when the teacher would have the class engage in a game of Jeopardy (over the years those classes ranged from Social Studies to Physics and these many years later those are the classes that stick in my memory). Clearly Jeopardy is a game – after all it’s a game show – and wouldn’t we also include a Spelling Bee in the game category? Although “games” tend to focus on entertainment through challenge, that is not always the case. Sometimes any perceived entertainment value is only the trojan horse used to sneak in and deliver information.
I run a nonprofit organization headquartered in Atlanta.
Jennifer Ann’s Group is focused on the prevention of teen dating violence and since 2008 we have sponsored an annual video game design contest to challenge game designers to create video games about teen dating violence. We believe that dating abuse is the type of topic that many teens / tweens would prefer to be introduced to through self-guided learning. That does not mean that this is the only approach, but rather is an adjunct to other methods of increasing awareness and providing educational information about this sensitive (and disturbingly prevalent) issue. Our games have been played hundreds of thousands of times and led to many follow-up conversations with teachers, counselors, and parents.
(The games are free and online at http://JenniferAnn.org/games)
It would be a mistake to broadly paint any medium – be it books, movies, video games, music – with a good / bad label; we should embrace them all and instead focus on the message.
Drew Crecente
Founder, Executive Director
Jennifer Ann’s Group
Bravo, Jen! I wrote my latest post BEFORE seeing that you beat me to it! Thank you.
Here is the problem I have with this blog post. I will again reiterate to all of you, including Ms. Ravitch, that you did not read Gates’ remarks THOROUGHLY and only picked out the tidbits you felt could serve your own agenda, which is to lambast digital learning and anyone who is “not an educator” who chooses to make suggestions on how to reinvent our public education system.
In this latest summary on eSchoolNews, you will see that Gates says, “We’re not saying the whole curriculum turns into this big game. We’re saying it’s an adjunct to a serious curriculum,” he said.
Yet, most of you fed off of the remarks of Ms. Ravitch, who thinks that Gates wants to replace the entire curriculum with video games and that it is the coming of the evil empire into our schools. I am issuing a friendly warning to all of you. It does not serve the best interests of the intelligent debate over education reform in this country when people like Ms. Ravitch decide to selectively interpret articles without seeing their full intent. This intentionally distorts the true message that the person is trying to convey, and that was to realize that games can be used effectively in the 21st century learning environment.
So before you draw any conclusions, perhaps it makes sense to read a person’s interview FULLY before commenting?
“Bill Gates Says. Diane Ravitch’s blog” was indeed a great post, can not help but wait to read alot more of ur blog posts. Time to spend a little time on the web lmao. Thanks for your effort -Yvonne