The Joy of learning Can a game controller replace a textbook in the academic world? by Matt Brennan Fox Valley Career Center game programming technology teacher Anna Schwein had her students focus on “entertainment” video games at the beginning of the fall semester in order for them to keep an interest in the topic. However, there is more to the video game market than shoot 'em ups and sports games, and there is more to her class. A growing aspect of the industry falls under the “edutainment” genre, or games designed to help children learn while entertaining at the same time. Schwein plans to focus about one-third of the semester on this growing aspect of the industry, she said. “It's (edutainment is) going to become bigger and bigger,” she said. “Kids really get a lot out of it.” David Williamson Shaffer, assistant professor of learning science at the University of Wisconsin Madison, has devoted a significant amount of time to studying it, having written a book called “How video games help children learn.” Shaffer said that epistemic games have a lasting value with children. Epistemic games place children in the role of a professional, and force them to think in an innovative way, he said. These games provide benefits that traditional book learning does not provide, he said. “They (those playing the games) get better at thinking about problems in the real world,” he said. One example of an epistemic game would be Urban Science, a game that forces the player to think from the perspective of an urban planner. The objective is to build a city, going through the necessary steps in the planning level. The more popular game, Sim City, also has players build a city, but the building process is more simplified, Shaffer said. The game can be part of a larger discussion on planning, but skips some of the more intricate steps in the process like planning and zoning, he said. “Decisions in real cities don't get made that way,” he said. Epistemic games give children a knowledge base that goes beyond a list of facts, Shaffer said. He used the example that many students spend the first five to six years of their math lives learning how to do what a calculator can do. “We're essentially teaching them how to be redundant,” he said. What the games do is teach them how to think like an urban planner, lawyer, architect or doctor, he said. Shaffer said that many professionals work on these problems, and then take a step back to talk about them. Children need the same thing. After becoming an urban planner, or whatever the game entails, they need to talk with a teacher, parent or some kind of mentor, he said. “It shows them how to think about problems in the real world,” he said. The important formula for edutainment games is to give the player some sort of reward after reaching a certain level of skill, Schwein said. At Kaneland, students play a video game that allows the player to take basketball shots after they attain a certain level of skill with their typing. More textbook companies are also putting games online that supplement the material from their textbooks. That way students can play games that reinforce the material they have learned within the chapter, Schwein said. Shaffer predicts that the serious game market, which includes edutainment along with any sort of training games, will continue to expand. He compared it to the book market. There are books that are in the entertainment realm, and books that are more educational. “Plenty straddle both sides,” he said. “You're going to see a similar range in the game market over time.” Schwein said that edutainment genre has been around since the days of Sesame Street. Now the medium is more interactive, she said. “Kids really get a lot out of it,” she said. “It makes the games more valuable to have interactivity.” 01/11/2008