A comment from a colleague in an email this week:
"My 13 year old grandson has been staying with us for the past week. I've learned that we need to release our text as a video game."
My quick reply....
I've tried to bring an educational video game to schools. It's called Nanolegends (www.nanolegends.com) Distributed throughout the world by KendallHunt.
Great reviews, stellar graphics (for 3 years ago). Total sales – under 100 units for all of Canada even though it had great buzz and interest. I heard a talk from one of the executives at a video game company a few years ago and he was asked about getting into video games and education. His comment was if any of his games were ever moving into the educational space he’d sell the product – all of it – and get the “hell of out of there.” His company would be dead if it relied on education. Those comments gave me pause about the whole gaming and educational learning world.
Still, if you could figure something out, have a few million bucks to do it, provide every teacher with the training on how learning actually does happen with the game (and get them past the idea a game is just for fun), provide the infrastructure in the school for all kids, I think you’d have a game changer.
So, maybe not today, but it’s on the horizon .....
Wondering what’s it’s doing to all our kids brains all this videogaming ....
And my thought after sending the email:
Is all this focus on technology all hype and "snake oil". We can't even find money to fund for the basics without fundraising for sports and music programs and parent councils paying for books. Why do we keep dumping our precious dollars into 3rd rate, unproven (in terms of actual student learning) computers? Do our kids really learn math better by running their hand over an interactive whiteboard? $2500 (plus the cost of "borrowed software" and training) buys a lot of other resources for all kids in the school to use at the same time instead of just one kid (sorry, cooperative learning going on, so two kids!).
I'm not saying get rid of technology. Let's just think really hard and look for research (and best practice) for how to effectively use it.
