By Alistair Owens Managing Director keen2learn educational games
Food labels are now awash with details of the ingredients,
what’s good and bad, high in this, low in that and percentages of daily
allowances. Could this extend to video games to show the percentage of educational
content contained in the games.
The skills of the games developer have grown immeasurably
over the years. Graphics and realism matched to the growing power of the
computer and the demand of the consumer. This is a huge market where the
development costs of a game are equally large. It is this that prevents the
full adoption of the techniques in most educational games where the volume of
sales are proportionately lower and cost recovery less feasible.
As a consequence the amazing skill of the games developer is
predominately lost to education. Yet this is the one area where an amazing
breakthrough could be achieved. Certain manufactures are making incursions such
as Wii, Nintendo and Microsoft. The danger is that their commercial might could
swamp the smaller, and potentially more innovative developer. The risk of a PC
versus Mac, VHS versus Betamax battle emerging, where the better version lost
out could develop. Equally the possibility of a paradigm shift in education could
occur, it needs both encouragement and control.
The advent of the iPod took the market established by the
Sony Walkman and turned it on its head. Perhaps Apple never dreamed of the
influence and market changes that would occur. The music industry has spun
through vinyl records, cassettes, CD’s to downloads in 10 years. The
application now is huge and versatile; even Churches use iPods to play organ
music during services where organists have disappeared. But strangely all is
not what it seems. The sound mixer of the original recording has apoplexy when
the final version is released. The master recording quality has to be
exceptional, but whilst the sound reproduction of a vinyl recording is very high, technological difficulties means a CD has to clip the wave
form reducing the quality. An iPod clips it further. A case of one forward and two steps back perhaps.
The control of educational content in video games needs equal care. It is
pointless if the established skill of the educationalist is clipped in the
final reproduction of an educational game. It is probably safe to assume that
market forces will drive some existing educational games companies under.
Unable to afford the huge development costs to enter the mass market potential
they will simply disappear swamped by the big guns. Yet their knowledge base is
phenomenal.
The ideal would be to harness skills from both the games
developer and educationalist camps. In reality the end product has to have
commercial potential and involve an inevitable compromise. Perhaps the ideal solution
would incorporate a minimum educational content in all games. This could be revealed on
the packaging in similar fashion to food ingredients. Minimum content,
recommended daily doses and key benefits clearly stated in coloured bands.
We are at a crossroads in education. Conventional teaching
has developed skills that could be better applied through new technologies. The
current approach is not necessarily working. Changes in society, disruptive
children, manipulative effect of targets, SAT’s and GCSE conspire to confuse
and divert the impact of teaching. We are no further advanced in the overall
achievement than 30 years ago. Whilst
technology has advanced at the speed of light, learning appears to have moved
at the speed of sound. There is huge potential to embrace educational games, or
educational content in video games as a means of “learning in disguise.”
Playing games on the modern platforms now available, and those yet to emerge, means that some of
the 85% of time children spend outside of school can be captured. Practice has
the greatest influence in retention of learning. What better way than to make
it fun. As Plato said: "Do not, my friend, keep children to their studies by compulsion, but by play."
