Serious Games are an old concept

It's time for an interesting history lesson. Some are of the opinion that the present educational system is archaic. I agree that it can be improved of, but recognize that is has brought global society quite far. Most of it is still based on unfounded didactic principles upheld in teaching since ancient Greece, like learning by heart for example.

Games as societal integrated learning devices, I argue, are an old concept as well. The origin of serious games can be traced to at least 1794 with "Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man" writen by Friedrich Schiller.

I haven't read the book yet but I surely will. It is partly supposed to be about "play as a force of civilization, which helps humans exit their animal conditions and aspire to become members of enlightened communities" .
A vision I atleast subscribe to.

 
Now let us go a bit further into past to find a new future with the words of Schiller "Live with your century but do not be its creature.". Because an aspiring vision of serious games in the future can be read in the brilliant short story "Mimsy Were the Borogroves" by Lewis Padgett  (the movie adaptation is quite sappy though). Basically it's about a boy and his younger sister accidentally stumbling across toys from a far away future. These toys are games that supposedly train and condition children in the future to allow connection with a society that we are not able to conceive of yet. The younger sister is even a better player than her older brother, because due to her age she has a larger capacity for learning new structure.

In short; serious games have a serious position in philosophy and can be tied to seriously astounding visions of the future. How's that for a history lesson.

Khan Academy and Co. just let them rise

A lot's been said about the Khan Academy and the wave of massive online open course providers like Codecademy.com, I'm not going to say anything about those MOOC's, I'm going to talk about the old boys network that rules over present-day education. The network that should not be defended by teachers. Teachers are mostly passionate, putting all their effort into the upbringing of responsible citizens on just a meagre salary. While we recognize that children are our future, we should put our money where our mouth is. I thing we all agree on that.

This article is just about the Dutch situation, however I imagine it's more or less equal across the western world. Recently I've come across the "schoolboekenscan" or "schoolbookscan" a paper presenting the view of the Dutch market authority (Nma) on the concentration of educational resource providers across the board. It paints a grimm picture of the market concentration. The turnover of eductional resources in the Netherlands of primary education alone is 115 million Euro per year. 80% to 90% Of this market is divided up between three mayor publishers (ThiemeMeulenhoff, Noordhoff, Malmberg). The rest is divided among smaller publishers.

The market authority adds that the teaching-methods are more or less customized to the wishes of the publisher with only a small amount of effort being spend adjusting the content to the wishes of actual teachers. This same pattern is projected on middle school and high school educational resources in the Netherlands.

The sad thing most of the money of educational resources is public expenditure. Just imagine 115 million Euro being spend on open source teaching methodes, pedagogically and didactically based on present day scientific knowledge. One country is all it takes to shake the foundations of education if they began with opening eduction with maths and arithmetic (both widely adaptable across the globe).

It might even create some room for the games I so love.

How about your countries? What is it's situation?

Video content in a game setting.

Videos are used in a wide variety of ways  in games. Like the next video on Texas hold'm poker.
 Visuals may be appealing and may look flashing but will it get the desired teaching result. Card games are for example mostly learned in a real-life setting with all cards laid open, which get you playing really fast. A non-life game example may be an interactive tutorial game against NPC's (non-player characters).

The point I'm trying to make is that the choice of media-mix in games should depend on the desired result. Research comparing newspapers and tv news have shown that the retention rate of newspapers is significantly higher. Therefore video's should never be used to transfer dense amounts of information.

It can of course be used to inspire awe and add drama. Or even to clarify a spatial orientation of characters in a game-world. But refrain from transferring to much information with animations or video's.

Games and Physical Activity - Thinking in Opportunities

This is a game a friend of mine used to play a lot, "dance dance revolution". These players are at a very high skill level. It's recorded real-time...

It is a dancing game using an electronic button mat, those buttons have to be touched with your feet on the right rhythm.

Personally I'm more into martial arts then dancing and was wondering how you could teach martial arts or practice sport at all with a game. There's nothing wrong with real life sport, but in martial arts for example you need a partner or teacher and they're not always around. Additionally some exercises have to be repeated for a minimum amount to improve your movement and skills.

Gamification of sport exercises or even using it as a full-grown game element may very well open up ways even for professional athletes to improve. Games won't go away, but in the battle of obesity in the western world I think we should recognize exergaming as a serious opportunity to improve the lifestyle and most importantly make exercise fun!

Epicentre of programming

During my internship I'm confronted with a lot of interesting views.
One of the views of some programmers I've come into contact with is that children should atleast learn one programming language in school. Most research on programming courses with children to create games have shown signs of improved technical self-efficacy. It may even decrease the so called beta divide between boys and girls. Additionally it allows people to gain incomparable knowledge of the digital world instead of just sitting behind facebook wondering about it's concept (the concept is elegant, the evil isn't).

One of the programmers has even had the idea to implement exercises with the adaptive Rekentuin.nl algoritm. It's probably doable. A lot of programming subskills like logic statements can only be practiced through forms of repetition, making some form of gamemechanic a good option. A challenge...

Codeacademy.com can serve as best practice example. A brilliant site, offering free programming starters courses online. User friendly and actually beginning at the Noob level.

Just imagine one country that replaces a dead language like Latin with a live rapidly evolving language like Java.
An interesting future sure is approaching...

A wide perspective

Nobelprize Games

This is a site with some lightly entertaining games. The bloodtype game for example
makes you aware of different bloodtypes and how you can be tested for one.

Probably something for biology class. The games are not entertaining for me, but a challenge in class
to be graded on highscore will probably drill the bloodtypes right in. A serious game should always be used in addition to external real-life feedback, application or stimuli.

There are a lot of subjects to choose from on this site, all nobelprize related.
Explore a little.

Games in Educational Context

This is a pretty important video. One of the main features of digital media, like games is the ability to gather data and compare it. Every teachers assesses his or her students, however we mostly lack comparability. If regular arithmetic exercises were simply done on a tablet, each and every exercise could be used to create a learning profile to improve individual instruction.
past zich aan het tempo/niveau aan
geeft feedback op resultaten
ondersteunt leerstijlen en leerstrategiën
wijzigt functionaliteit en inhoud
Games should therefore not only be seen as a game, but as a data gatherer in a wider system of assessment.

There are atleast five important features for serious games to have if they want to be fully usable in education:

1. It adapts to a student's level and speed.
2. It adapts to a student's learning strategy and style or alters it
3. It adapts the presented content accordingly
4. It allows feedback to the student and ways of contemplation
5. Teachers should not have to adapt to it

Original source of four of the important features:
http://youtu.be/W8M6uMCcjyU