Gaming in the Classroom

I just got off the phone with Bert Snow, the lead game designer at Muzzy Lane. Recently, I've been thinking about providing products to benefit learning in the classroom. This morning I had an idea that it would be incredible to design a game that would allow students to actually place themselves into the roles important to current events. Rather than just reflecting on questions asked by others, students could imagine that they were in the situation and make important decisions.

Perhaps this idea stemmed from my thoughts on the relationship between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. I think that it's absolutely essential for students to learn important ideas. I'd go so far as to say that student should learn some facts. I wouldn't want, for example, somebody to graduate from 8th grade thinking that California is on the East Coast. The date July 4, 1776 is important. The resources available on Web 1.0 provide important information. Successful Americans need to know some important ideas.

Hopefully they are using these ideas, however, to accomplish significant tasks and develop new knowledge. For example, why does a student need to know that California is on the West Coast. Hopefully they'll be interested in learning more about the United States. The might want to go on a driving tour of the U.S. If they don't have a basic model of the geography of the U.S. in their minds, it would be difficult to plan such a tour. Games allow students to plan these tours. Perhaps games should also provide relevant information that students can use to make their decisions.

As I write, I'm thinking about the problems of Web 2.0, or perhaps to put it more succinctly why Web 2.0 is not enough. Wikis, blogs, podcasts, vodcasts and social network sites don't have information infused within them. They rely upon users to input information. But, frankly, the information that users input is only as good as the information that they have available and the quality of their thinking to digest and manipulate this information. Perhaps games could represent an ideal junction between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. They could provide important information and at the same time allow users to interact.

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