A Novel Idea for Education

[Mythsaje]

There is some debate as to how much trouble our education system is in. The RW has used it to leverage certain things like the No Child Left Behind law, which, in my opinion, not only teaches to the lowest common denominator, but does nothing to promote critical and innovating thinking.

Some may say that our education system is doing fine, but comparisons with other industrialized natioins give lie to this fact. And, frankly, is "fine" good enough? Not to me it isn't, and it should be for the rest of us either. We need to do better than fine if the United States isn't destined to become a mere shadow of its former glory.

I have a rather controversial, innovative, novel idea I'd like to see put to the test. It would take some boldness on the part of educators and those with the power to make it happen, but I'm convinced there are some real possibilities here.

I'm an author now, but between the ages of 19 and 32 or so, I spent a great deal of my free time designing and play testing a Role Playing Game (RPG). Yes, yes, I was a D&D geek in my youth. Still play it on occasion now, though I've simply got way too much to do in other areas to put much time into it now.

Gamers are generally within the top 10% percentile in both mathematics and language skills.

What I've long considered is the feasibility of the formation of a charter or magnet school that uses Role Playing Games (RPGs) as an educational tool. Maybe not AD&D, specifically, for a variety of reasons, but through similar game systems. They teach operation within a framework of rules, stress the value of imagination, and can (depending on the game master) teach cooperation, problem solving, and creative use of available resources.

I believe a game utilizing time travel as a background could teach a lot about history and basic science, for example. I mean, imagine a group of American teenagers from our time catapulted back to the Revolutionary War and being led through interactions with the founding fathers. Or any other time in history, for that matter. This could also be done through the introduction of alternate history theories in which a pivotal point in the past diverged from our universe and created a brand new sequence of events.

Students could be placed in various situations where they are allowed not only to observe historical occurences, but also to interact...and thus also be able to see what possible repercussions could be from their actions.

In my own fantasy novels, I have created a system of magic that relies on both imagination and knowledge to operate most effectively. A mage can produce a myriad of different effects, even up to and including the treatment of injuries and disease in the human body. Assuming, of course, that the character has the requisite skills to understand the workings of the human body. Biology and physiology, among other skills, are necessary for this to work. This could actually motivate kids to learn more about these things themselves, simply to give them an advantage in the game.

I've seen this theory of mine operate in the real world as well. One of the kids I used to game with, who became something of a protege of mine in many respects, is currently being wooed by Bastyr University in Seattle to enter its M.D. program. This is a kid who, when I met him, seemed to be spiraling into a life of drugs and crime. Through gaming, I was able to interdict this slide and set him on a path to bigger and better things in his life.

I'm talking about a completely new theory of education here. Role Playing wouldn't be the WHOLE of the curriculum, of course, but it could be a large part of the foundation of a new school of thought about education in general. Kids would be motivated to seek out and learn new things, and then have the opportunity to TEST that knowledge in ways they cannot in the current system.

Coupled with a desire to pass along REAL WORLD skills such as budgeting, maintaining a bank account, job search skills, positive social interaction (interpersonal communication), financial planning, home buying, and such, a curriculum that used RPGs to teach students not only to think outside the box, but to seek out and assimilate information on their own, could be the basis for a brand new way to educate our children.

One I truly believe is worthy of exploration.

Any thoughts?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. I wanna play!

sounds like a brilliant idea, even if it's just used at home in addition to school.

seriously, as a grown-up, I would love to play a game like that.

[Mythsaje]

3. Someday soon

I hope to sit back down at the drawing board and re-design the game from the ground up. Right now I'm deep into working on my novels because they will eventually give me the opportunity to escape from the day job hell and allow me to work on alternate projects like the RPG.

And, yeah, I think it would be just as fun for adults as well.

[mike_c]

2. you know, NPR did a story this morning on game design degrees...

...being offered by some universities and one guy described an award-winning educational game that involved such learning tasks as "moving clouds so the rain would put out a volcano."

I certainly hope someone can do better than that!

[Mythsaje]

5. I use messing with the weather

in the short story on my website to touch on Chaos Theory or the "Butterfly Effect." Manipulating the weather with magic, for example, can cause a chain reaction that changes the patterns over a large area and is generally considered "bad juju" because of the law of unintended consequences.

:)

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. Ever since the very first video games were marketed,

I have asked why no one can sell one that has just a few math problems on it. Every kid in America would learn their times tables if they were part of a Nintendo game.

In other words, I think your idea is marvelous!

[Mythsaje]

6. It's as if the video game designers (and marketers) have decided

that there are entertainment games and educational games and never the twain shall meet.

I think they're missing incredible opportunties to expand their respective markets, personally.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. We teachers can tell you all about how homework

and learning in general (like reading) competes with video games. It is positively infuriating.

As soon as my school was wired for the internet, the first thing my kids wanted to search for was "game cheat codes". I was astonished. Kids in 4th and 5th grade who couldn't tell you what 3+2 is without counting on their fingers were Googling and finding complicated video game codes and memorizing them. It was definitely a :wtf: moment. LOL

I also hold the education community partly responsible for this. Instead of waiting for Nintendo to come out with a game that incorporated multiplication facts, we could have been writing our own games. And there are a few good web sites for kids along these lines, but they are not close to the popularity of Nintendo and other video games.

Here is a website I just love for kids learning to read - in case any parents of young kids are reading this. BTW, a 6 year old showed this site to me a year ago. :)
http://www.starfall.com/

[Mythsaje]

8. The memory necessary to play some of those

games is pretty amazing. I was watching my kids play when they were visiting this Summer and they learn where the things are and are almost always able to go back and find them when they need to with very little effort.

I think there's some value in video games, but not nearly as much as in the table top style games I'm talking about. Video and computer games have a necessarily limited matrix of options available, while the table-top games are theoretically limitless within the bounds of the game mechanics themselves.

[erinlough]

9. in about 1990 I encountered a program

whose name I can no longer remember which was based on video games. The general idea was to provide the games on the list (games like MYST) with no instructions and talk to the kids about how they problem solved to learn the game.

It was based on metacognition and had to include the discussion about how that type of learning related to other things they may not have been so keen to learn but had to for school.

I thought it had a great deal of promise. I used the ideas of the system with students and still do, however with specific objectives that most states have due to high stakes testing it is now hard to fit it in. At any rate the key is discussion of the learning that takes place.

Good luck with your idea!

[Mythsaje]

10. As I responded to another poster

I think video (and computer) games have their place, but what I'm talking about is the table-top variety that have a far less restrictive matrix of options on the part of the players. The only limitations are their knowledge, their imagination, and the rules themselves.

[dalaigh lllama]

11. I had to recommend this

It's brainstorming like this that can move us forward in education. I'm not an educator, but have talked to enough folks that are, and so I'm aware of the different learning styles that kids use. I was fortunate enought to do best when I could read the material, so I always did well in school, but kids who do better with auditory or visual learning styles (or others I don't remember) sometimes can get the short end of the stick in the education system.

One thing that could be done that would make a huge difference, IMHO, is to make being intelligent and learned "popular." I think sports are great and necessary, but when the raison d'etre of a school is it's football or basketball team, that's just goofy.

[Mythsaje]

12. Thanks...

I really wish we did have the means to focus on the different learning styles a little better. My best friend has dyslexia and never learned to communicate well in writing. He's a slow and methodical thinker, but absolutely brilliant if you actually pay attention. He was in special ed all the way through school because they didn't know what else to do with him.

He also happens to be one of the better gamers I've ever known. Very creative and quick-witted within the setting of a game. Maybe because it never had real-world consequences that he had to ponder at length.

[LWolf]

13. I use role playing games all the time.

In the classroom, we call them "simulations," lol. Some bear a small resemblance to the old D&D games my boys grew up playing.

They can be a motivating part of what we do. Of course, nothing is "ALL," and all students should get multiple formats and multiple instructional methods.

Particularly important, in a school setting, is for a simulation to be concrete, to use concrete tools. My students use computers to research, and occasionally produce a document, but they do more building real projects during the course of a unit than they do in a virtual world. As they should, in my professional opinion.

[Mythsaje]

14. I don't tend to think computer simulations are as valuable

as what I'm talking about for a number of reasons. Mostly because they're inherently limited in scope and cannot possibly allow for the myriad of choices a particularly talented gamer might come up with.

For example. In a fairly recent game I was playing a ranger (like Strider from LOTR) that had found or been given (I don't remember which) a device that could open up a ten square foot passage through a wall. It could only do this once. (Damn near useless, as far as I was concerned. Regardless, my character kept a hold of it. It's never a good idea to dump a potentially useful magical item, even if you have no idea what you'd use it for).

My group ran afoul of a large metal golem (a kind of fantasy robot) and it was kicking our butts.

I thought about it for a little while and then pulled out the rod and used it to open a passage under its feet. The spell it used was called "Passwall" but the definition of the spell did not dictate it HAD to be used on a wall.

The golem fell in the hole, got stuck there, and was then vulnerable to the claws of our shapeshifting druid character who was in troll form.

I'm talking about REAL role-playing here, rather than the limited version allowed by computer simulations. It usually involves a group of people sitting around a table with a game master setting up situations for the players and their characters to deal with. A good game master can insert any number of puzzles or obstacles to surmount, and points can be given for coming up with creative solutions using the resources at one's disposal. Whatever they might be.

This was a D&D campaign, but I've done similar things in other games with more current settings. I have been known to drive game masters to distraction simply because I think outside the box more comfortably than I think inside it.

It's funny because this proclivity comes in handy in real world situations as well. I've been known to McGyver things even though I don't have any particular mechanical aptitude simply because I can think of obscure ways to use everyday items. I'm very good at solving particular kinds of puzzles as well.

I remember one game I was playing, Shadowrun, which is a cyberpunk setting, for the most part, in which my team was hired to "liberate" a machine that had fallen into the possession of a street gang that used an old industrial park as a base. We learned that this gang had arranged to sell the machine to another group at a specific time and managed to get to the location during the scheduled pickup.

I took in the scene, which included a helicopter waiting for the transfer of the machine and a couple of guards, and instantly came up with a plan. The machine was fairly bulky and we didn't have a reliable vehicle in which to transport it, and we weren't there in large enough numbers to take on the gang that was selling it, so we snuck up, took out the guards and the pilot, and simply replaced them. When those who were buying the machine brought it out to put it in the helicopter, we took them out and flew off with the machine ourselves.

My character had the skillset to be able to fly the helicopter, which was handy, and the only reason I'd came up with that particular plan in the first place. Had that not been the case, I would've had to come up with another tactic--probably similar, but leaving the original pilot in place and forcing him to fly us out of there.

These are, of course, just a couple of examples of what I'm talking about. With the right game and the right mindset, any number of settings and situations could be devised to teach any number of subjects. Puzzles might be mathematical, linquistic, or even some combination of the two. They could even be mechanical, biological, or based upon some other form of science.

The possibilities are, literally, infinite.

[LWolf]

16. I agree about the computer simulations.

I don't really see a place in the classroom for those. The kinds of simulations we do involve taking on historical roles and playing them in simulated situations. It works similar to a traditional role-playing game, with the focus on the historical period, and successful decisions being dependent on that knowledge.

[Mythsaje]

18. Oh, that's cool. n/t

[Odin2005]

15. Many people have already had the same idea, IIRC.

The main problem is institutional inertia, the way our educational system is structured is being made obsolete by new technology but few have realized that yet.

[distantearlywarning]

17. OMG!

I want to go to your school!

I would have LOVED a school system like that.