Modern Prometheus Teaches Ethics & Decision Making

Nichola Groom with Reuters has a nice article on Dr. Doug Thomas’ work at USC.

Doug Thomas, an associate professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, is developing a game for students ages 10 to 12 that aims to teach ideas and skills not found in traditional textbooks.

“Because games are experiential they might be good at teaching things that you learn through experience, and that are difficult to teach through books,” Thomas said in an interview.

Various ethical dilemmas abound in the game, with different outcomes depending on choices students make. The game takes an hour or so, and Dr. Thomas expects students and teachers to have a debriefing time following game play in order to cement the learning objectives. It’s possible the game may be incorporated in schools using Quest Atlantis:

One challenge for “Modern Prometheus” and other classroom games is finding teachers willing to incorporate them in their lesson plans.

“It’s really hard for teachers to work with an unfamiliar technology that the kids know more about than they do,” Thomas said. “They feel like ‘my job is hard enough already.”‘

He also acknowledges that the game doesn’t quite fit into many established middle-school curricula.

To overcome that obstacle, Thomas is collaborating with Indiana University Professor Sasha Barab, whose “Quest Atlantis” game is used by 4,500 students around the world. Currently in beta testing, “Modern Prometheus” is expected to be in some U.S. classrooms by spring.

It’s good to see games designed for classroom consumption receive positive press like this. I’ll also be interested in reading Dr. Groom’s forthcoming articles on research surrounding the effort.

References:
Groom, N. (2007, December 6). Universities bring video games into classrooms. Washington Post. [Online]. Retrieved December 6, 2007 from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2007/12/06/AR2007120601261.html

Are Videogames Art? Does it Matter?

Thomas Cross, writing for The Student Life at Pomona College (“The oldest college newspaper in Southern California”), notes the debate between film critic Roger Ebert and movie/game/book creator Clive Barker in a column entitled “Video Games: Works of Art or a Waste of Time?” Ebert opines that videogames can never be art because people have to make choices while playing them. Their eye is not guided, so to speak, as it is in movies, paintings, books and music. Therefore, they are a waste of time. Cross points out that other media in their infancy suffered similar criticisms. Videogames, because of their interactive nature, hold the potential to transcend other art forms.

Ben Wood, a junior at Oklahoma, writes in a November 1 article for BlogCritics Magazine about the games as art controversy. He points out in “Video Games As Art: Does it Matter?” that Mike Musgrove with the Washington Post gave a copy of BioShock to book critic Michael Dirda to play with for a couple weeks. Dirda agreed that BioShock held “artistic value,” but was not a “work of art.” Wood concludes that art currently holds an insufficient definition.

The best thing about this sort of dialogue between opposing sides is the fact the debate is occurring in the first place. As the medium matures, it is starting to gain attention from others outside its circle of influence. Consequently, as with previous media, videogaming continues to grow in stature as a serious medium.

Elderly Turn to Videogames to Stay Mentally Fit

The Washington Post had a nice article recently about octogenarians using video games in order to keep their minds fit. A “brain health movement” is sweeping retirement communities nationwide, according to the article. Leslie Walker wrote that Nintendo’s Brain Age and other mentally strenuous video games have joined Bingo, Sudoku, and crossword puzzles as mechanisms to promote brain fitness in the aging and elderly.

Other video games offered by retirement communities to their citizens include one called Brain Fitness, and the virtual bowling game on the Nintendo Wii.

Brain fitness in general is booming, thanks in part to America’s aging population:

In fact, baby boomers may be the biggest catalyst of the brain-fitness boom. They started turning 60, and the nation’s over-65 population will double between 2000 and 2030 — from 35 million to 72 million people. That forecast has triggered an entrepreneurial rush to supply them with anti-aging products.

Next, Walker plugs a couple of related blogs, including SharpBrains.com, with whom I’ve recently traded links:

A growing body of research suggests that mental activity in middle age and earlier can help later in life. As a result, Web sites such as HappyNeuron.com are springing up to offer online games to people of all ages, while blogs like SharpBrains.com provide commentary on the fledgling industry.

Finally, Andrew Carle over at George Mason gets a nice quote:

“No technology trend in fitness has gotten more media attention than cognition training,” said Andrew Carle, a George Mason University professor who studies brain-training products. “What’s driving it is the jump we are seeing in Alzheimer’s, which is an age-related disease.”

References:
Walker, L. (2007, September 12). Keep your brain power up. The Washington Post, pp. HE09. [Online]. Retrieved September 22, 2007 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2007/09/10/AR2007091001879.html

Warcraft Comic Book Helps SAT Scores

… At least, that’s the idea. Elizabeth Woyke over at BusinessWeek reports that the Washington Post’s test prep company Kaplan has released a series of comic books designed to help buttress the vocabulary of young test-takers. The manga, or Japanese-style comic books so popular these days, are chock full of key words found on the SAT, PSAT, and ACT tests. Each word is used in context within the comic books, highlighted, and defined. Thus, future test takers can read a thrilling comic book and hopefully increase their vocabulary for the test.

Woyke reports that popular themes among youngsters provided the story and settings for the comic books:

Los Angeles publisher TOKYOPOP provided all the manga: a sci-fi fantasy, a medieval epic based on the hit video game Warcraft, and a swords-and-sorcery tale. To beef up the books’ SAT quotient, the companies upgraded some of the dialogue. But all the original art and story lines are preserved, says TOKYOPOP CEO Stu Levy.

The comic books may also appeal to English language learners.

Suggested Harry Potter Games

With the latest Harry Potter movie raking in millions at the theater, and with the final book installment in the boy wizard’s saga due out this weekend, I have to wonder if Potter mania will extend to the world of computer gaming at some point.

Already, countless columnists and wordsmiths are postulating and speculating about Harry’s effect on reading for today’s youth. Kevin Nance over at the Chicago Sun Times confesses he avoided Potter mania for a long time in a vain effort to avoid following the crowd. But, when Amazon offered the first five books in a paperback box set, he shelled out the dough and caught up with the series.

Many educators and educational commentators have expressed their glee that Potter mania has led more kids to crack open a book, those antiquated information transmission devices that are so yester-year they don’t even require a power source or wireless connection. This is a triumph in the minds of many educators and parents since reading in general, and reading books in particular, is considered the highest form of learning acquisition. Reading books is so revered, in fact, that rabid proponents don’t seem to care what, exactly, kids are reading. Just the fact they are reading is good enough. Content will take care of itself if the kids just learn to read for the sake of reading, they say.

Fair enough. But, has Potter mania resulted in a higher level of reading? Has it led to higher literacy rates in the English speaking world? Maybe, maybe not. Ron Charles over at the Washington Post writes that most folks still don’t read novels for pleasure, Harry Potter notwithstanding.

Still, there is an awful lot of attention and interest surrounding J.K. Rowling’s work. So, since video gaming is my primary research interest, I wondered if the Harry Potter phenomenon would extend to the gaming world, and if it would have similar effects there as it has had in the literary world.

Alas, the sad history of video games fashioned after movies is one of carelessness and neglect. Too often these games are obvious marketing afterthoughts, will little effort expended in making them truly great. Their guiding thought in creation has been that the many fans of the movies (or books and movies in Harry’s case) will simply buy the game and play it for a while based on its derivation from the parent material.

Doug Elfman gives a review of the latest Potter game that is typical. One nice thing about the Wii version of the game, Doug says, is you can wave the Wii controller around in the real world to control Harry’s virtual wand in the game. Alas, he was less than enthusiastic about the rest of the game.

This got me to thinking, what could be offered in the gaming world with the Harry Potter imprimatur that would approach his influence in the literary world? Here are a few of my ideas, from an educator’s point of view, of course:

Potter World: World of Warcraft meets Hogwarts (Alternative title: Hogwarts Online). Players assume the role of students, and progress through the school. Heavy reading could appease traditionalists, with spell and lore books filling a voluminous virtual library. Other academic exercises abound.

Potter Lab: A science lab set in the HP universe. Math and science teachers would delight in the potion creation classes and other exercises. (“Two pints, one ounce of bat spit mixed with 3 quarts of fairy dew … how many ounces in a pint? Curse the British measuring system!”)

Harry’s Math Arena: Math wizards face off in duels and Quidditch. Quick math skills are used to estimate the proper strength of a wand blast. Geometry and physics are employed to successfully win Quidditch tournaments.

Well, anyway, these ideas are certainly no more silly than other things that have come down the pike. And besides, maybe the kids would learn a thing or two.

Learning is Fun at Video Game Summer Camp

Continuing our ongoing discussion of teaching kids how to make video games in order to teach them programming skills, here is a prominent story from Thursday’s edition of the Washington Post detailing the Cybercamp program, which offers weeklong summer camps focused on programming video games, robotics, and other high tech activities.

Would you pay $1000 to have your child learn how to program video games? Apparently many parents do. I recall that famous game designer Richard Garriott (aka, Lord British), spent time in a summer camp devoted to programming while growing up.

Article author Nelson Hernandez indicates the traditional summer camp business is worth about $14 billion annually, specialty camps about $1.2 billion, and Cybercamps around half a billion. Cybercamps are run by a company called Giant Campus and are held at university locations around the country. Tuition runs $699 for a week of instruction; room and board are an additional $399.

The camps are focused on combining education with fun and games.

“It’s so fun,” [a student] said. “You get to learn, but you get to play games.”

That is the point of the camp. Giant Campus has gone as far as trademarking the phrase “Human brains learn more when they’re having fun.”

Obviously this notion of fun and games combined with learning is a winning combination for the company. Perhaps these ideas can be integrated more into traditional schools, if not in the classroom then perhaps in after-school and summer programs.

Speaking as an educator, I know that teachers out there would say to this idea, “Yes, but … we can have fun and games but it must teach to the test.” This is where things get interesting from a philosophical viewpoint. Here is a company making $500 million a year educating children who are having fun while learning. Traditional schools are focused on their state exams. Could a company like Giant Campus design curricula for schools that’s fun, engaging and leads to increased test scores?

Currently, the open-ended curricula Giant Campus uses seeks to engage students and offers them opportunities to explore a variety of things. Not interested in programming your own video game? How about messing with a robot? How about making your own web site? In a traditional setting, such freedom is more restricted to the material covered on the state exam. Not interested in the Pythagorean Theorem? Too bad, kid, you have to know that for the exam.

It is, at the very least, heartening that students have opportunities to be exposed to engaging and fun activities that involve video games and other tech-centric activities through programs like Cybercamp. This sort of pedagogy can be very enriching in a child’s life, and lead to long term success in other areas. I just wish that more traditional school-based learning could be as fun and engaging.

References

Hernandez, N. (2007, July 12). At tech camp, video games, robots — and no lanyards. Washington Post (p. B01).

Are Video Games Good Practice for Surgeons?

Newswires and the blogosphere were atwitter this week over results of a study published in Archives of General Surgery that indicated physicians with video game experience performed better at laparoscopic surgeries than those without video game experience.

Not mentioned much in the news coverage was the fact that only 33 surgeons were studied. This low number will no doubt lead to calls for additional experiments before any strong conclusions can be considered. Indeed, the journal published an accompanying critique that cautioned against too much optimism concerning the results. Nonetheless, the findings were interesting enough to grab the attention of the general public. Several news outlets carried the story including CNN, the Washington Post, Reuters, and others.

Quote of interest from the paper: “Surgeons who had played video games in the past for more than three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, were 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better overall than surgeons who never played video games … Current video game players made 32 percent fewer errors, were 24 percent faster, and scored 26 percent better overall than their nonplayer colleagues.”

Laparoscopic surgery involves fine hand-eye control with surgeons observing progress through monitors. Testing for speed and accuracy was performed on simulators designed to help train physicians for the procedure.

The authors also tested the surgeons on various arcade-style games, maintaining that surgeons with superior laparoscopic skills were better at video games than surgeons who were less skilled in laparoscopic surgery. In this way, they attempted to show the opposite of their findings is also true. Good at surgery = good at video games; good at video games = good at surgery. In this they succeeded, measuring the physicians at play using the games Super Monkey Ball 2, Star Wars Racer Revenge, and Silent Scope.

As I’ve pointed out elsewhere in this blog, by necessity the study used an easy to measure approach. In this case, the researchers took the tack of measuring mistakes made during simulated surgery, then comparing scores on traditional arcade games. The authors conclude that video games may be a good addition to medical training regimens.

Just as we have seen the ongoing adoption of video games in military circles, the study shows that video games are excellent for medical training purposes. It brings up the old training versus learning debate. With educational objectives, the benefits of video games remain more difficult to measure. Nonetheless, positive news on benefits of video games is a welcome relief from the usual salacious fare offered up by the media.

References

Rosser, J.C., Lynch, P.J, Cuddihy, L., Gentile, D.A., Klonsky, J., Merrell, R. (2007, February). The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st Century. Archives of Surgery, 142(2). 181-186.

Curet, M.J. (2007, February). The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st century—Invited critique. Archives of Surgery, 142(2). 186.

An online version of the article is available by subscription here:
http://archsurg.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/142/2/181