Via: +Stanford Engineering
- Playing To Learn
Late
February, panelists at Stanford discussed the value of using Educational Serious
Games, stating that “Interaction and opportunities to make choices are among
the virtues of the new generation of educational games.”(Please find also STANFORD Magazine: Serious Games as an Apollo Program for Math Education).
Serious Games
are already a significant category in the video game industry and are progressively
opening up possibilities for one-to-one instructions and interactions.
The panel
discussion, held at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) on February 26, was
part of the yearlong public course, Education's
Digital Future. Roy Pea, co-convener of the class and a professor in the
GSE, introduced the speakers by reminding that "gaming to learn has been
around Stanford for almost a decade, but only recently possibilities in the
realm of education have truly been appreciated.”
The panelists,
among the field's leading figures in academia, design and policy, zeroed in on
freedom and choice as crucial factors in explaining why and how children learn.
"Human
minds are plug-and-play devices; they're not meant to be used alone. They're
meant to be used in networks”, said James Paul Gee (Please see also Disconnects Between Serious Games Wins and Report Cards for Students’ Classroom Skills).
"Games allow us to do that – they allow us to use collective intelligence.”
Panelist
agreed that games help us develop non-cognitive skills that are as fundamental
as cognitive skills in explaining how we learn and if we succeed.
Read the full article here.
Read the full article here.