TKSham – More than just a Developer

Previously I have talked about Education 2.0 about Platform and this time I am going to talk about Educational Game.

Educational Game is a hot topic in education research area. How do we optimize the efficiency for children to learn from game?

Simply change the learning tools and interface? Well, switching from reading books to interactive eBooks? Or teaching children how to play sports with a Wiimote?

This is about the learning tools and user interface. You can take a look of this reference, yet it is not new – a year ago…

(Dated 08 July 2008)
Mobile Learning Platform to Enhance Quality of Learning and Teaching

港大「無線學習平台啟用禮」暨「校際奧運常識問答比賽」

Hong Kong students bring PSP to school, compete in exams

What should we include in the game? Learning English words? Or learning mathematics / history / decision making?

The content comes again. I would show some games which are web-based, to narrow down the scope we are discussing.

http://www.playfish.com/?page=game_geochallenge

http://www.playfish.com/?page=game_wordchallenge

http://www.farmtasia.com/

There are a few difficulties that educational games have –
1)    Hardly can we measure the effect for playing the Games. (Do you really learn more words when playing Word Challenge?)
2)    Sometimes, games are time-consuming. (Especially the Farmtasia designed by CUHK)
3)    Again, back to our first question, how does game improve learning efficiency?

To answer the first question, I would say we cannot have a clear definition for improvement in learning. Do parents really think academic result is all a child has? Education is not business, we do not need to have sales accomplishment.

For the second question, willing to spend more time on something means they are interested in it. Why can we treat playing computer games like playing the piano? Playing with Educational Games should be better than watching anime.

Finally, the learning efficiency. I have onced chatted with Prof. Wong Po Choi about learning with Games. He said people playing games simply enjoy one thing – finding regular pattern in the game, practice it and repeat it.

Playing first-person shooter game has the simple rules. If you get used to the physical rules in the virtual world (well, it is engine-dependent for different 3D games), you can predict the enemy movement. Instead of aiming at enemy’s header, you are aiming to an empty space.

One of my favorite – Quake 3

So, making games somehow outline and regular is useful in learning.

Why did Word Challenge offer 6 characters only at a time for a quiz?

Simplicity. Regular. Nothing unexpected.

Coming next – Education 2.0 – Daily basis.