It is true: the
technology can offer promising results in many applications, for example in
medicine or flight simulation. But the overall thrust was that games provide
advantages in “cultivating dispositions” – games for “social change,” as the
name of the group and festival indicates. As for such subjects as history, one
wonders: can we really go back in history, or just the history that the game
designer decides to create for us?
The Games for Learning Summit, part of the four-day Games for
Change Festival, began with opening remarks by Richard Culatta,
director of the Office of Education Technology at the U.S. Department of
Education, and then by industry representatives.
This event came two weeks after the annual ASU+GSV Summit (Arizona State University
and GSV capital investment firm) in Arizona. Arne Duncan himself addressed the
2,000-strong meeting of investors and technology start-up companies.
In New York City, the Games for Learning keynote
speaker, Michael Gallagher, President and CEO of the Entertainment Software
Association (ESA), the trade association representing U.S. computer and video
game publishers, acknowledged the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, and the sponsorship of Glass Labs
(Games, Learning, and Assessment Lab, which ESA co-founded). According to the company bio, since Gallagher joined the
organization in 2007, “ESA has heightened awareness and appreciation of the
value of video games as next-generation teaching tools.”
The site also reveals the intricate connections between
profit and nonprofit organizations and government. ESA’s spin-off, Glass Labs,
boasts “a ground-breaking collaboration among ESA, Institute of Play,
Electronic Arts, Educational Testing Service [producers of AP and SAT tests],
Pearson’s [the multi-billion dollar international textbook publisher], Center
for Digital Data, Analytics & Adaptive Learning as well as the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
– to research and develop game-based learning and assessment tools.”
Gallagher heralded the industry’s progress, as
evidenced by 5,000 teachers using “[Common] Core curriculum-compliant games,”
in over 10 million learning sessions. The technology will create the “workforce
of tomorrow,” as kids, naturally drawn to video games, will be even more so as
they learn about the $100,000 wages. The eight-billion-dollar textbook industry
is sure to grow, as books are adapted to the game format.
After his speech, Gallagher took questions with
Rafranz Davis, an “instructional technologist and educator.” Davis attested to
the wonders of gaming, and to those who might feel threatened said it is “our
responsibility to change how we teach.” Teachers are “saying” that games are a
better assessment tool than multiple choice questions. She suggested letting
students be “advocates” to overcome parental resistance.
A question about the lack of evidence for claims of
educational attainment was met by Davis’s testimony about learning about
football by playing the game Madden with her 15-year-old son. Gallagher
disputed the negative claim, although he did not go into any detail.
When a concern was expressed about supporting students
of color, Gallagher replied that the industry-aligned ESA foundation awards 30
scholarships a year for young women and minorities, supports making games for
“social purposes,” and gives challenge grants to teachers doing “pioneering
things.”
Another keynote speaker, Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell
Games and professor of entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon University,
then looked to the future, 2025, which is “coming at us faster and faster.”
Although the marketplace for educational games is terrible, game sales for
preschool and SAT preparation are “vibrant,” as parents seek to ensure
children’s readiness for school and college. He suggested developing teacher
networks in the manner of music social networks to provide a way for teachers
to buy games. Gaming’s advantages include immediate feedback on homework and
better assessments as teachers become empowered as “dungeon masters,” able to
see which student is falling behind.
On Day Two, Gallagher continued his pitch, even though
the official collaboration with the Department of Education was over. He noted
that ESA represents 146,000 employees of an industry that has been growing at
four times the rate of the U.S. economy. Located in Washington, D.C., ESA has
access to policy leaders and opinion makers, such as Debbie Wasserman-Schulz.
He encouraged audience members to apply for grants for “social impact” from
ESA’s non-profit.
This invitation for grant applications came on the
heels of the first day’s to apply to the Small Business Innovation Program at www.tech.ed.gov-developers.
For such things as demonstration prototypes, attendees were directed to www.edprizes.com,
a Department of Education site that offers a sign-up form for announcements
about competitions for prizes for helping students compete in the “global economy.”
One of the reasons for the widespread opposition to
Common Core has been the cost of buying new Common Core-aligned textbooks. But the
speakers enthused about replacing textbooks with games, and not only to teach
such subjects as science, but also history and civics. Games would “transform”
education, taking the idea of “flipped classrooms,” where students watch videos
at home and do homework in class, to a whole new level. Virtual reality and
augmented reality would produce amazing results.
It is true: the technology can offer promising results
in many applications, for example in medicine or flight simulation. But the
overall thrust was that games provide advantages in “cultivating dispositions”
– games for “social change,” as the name of the group and festival indicates.
As for such subjects as history, one wonders: can we really go back in history,
or just the history that the game designer decides to create for us? As
proponents discuss taking “textbook educational content media” to the next
level of “interdependent simulation,” one wonders about students’ reading
skills and abilities to contemplate and think independently. Proponents, insist
on the value of such technology-based learning even though the one controlled study by Kaplan showed that
videos were less effective than text-based problems.
But there is money to be made in developing games for
“social change.” The kinds of lessons to be imparted through this interactive
learning are scarier than the biased textbooks and teacher harangues we’ve
become used to seeing in the news. These lessons will be described in the next
installment.
Mary Grabar, Ph.D., has taught college English for
over twenty years. She is the founder of the Dissident
Prof Education Project, Inc., an education reform initiative that
offers information and resources for students, parents, and citizens. The
motto, “Resisting the Re-Education of America,” arose in part from her
perspective as a very young immigrant from the former Communist Yugoslavia
(Slovenia specifically). She writes extensively and is the editor of EXILED. Ms. Grabar is also a contributor to
SFPPR News & Analysis.
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