Here is a very interesting statistic I read in an editorial by NYC  Mayoral candidate Bill De Blasio on the current state of education .

According to the federal Department of Education, 60% of the jobs in the 21st century will require skills held by just 20% of today’s workforce.
 

 (Fact quoted from an editorial in the Daily News published on October 11th and wriiten by Bill De Blasio.) The full editorial can be accessed through the following link.
 

           http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/higher-taxes-brighter-future-article-1.1179570

What do you believe are the implications of this fact? What can we do to prepare children to hold skills that will be required for jobs in the 21st Century? Can games be designed and used in anyway to solve this problem?

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Many people I speak to about my interest in games, especially parents, show much hesitaltion in terms of accepting that there is scientfically proven studies to show the benefits of playing games.

A disclaimer: As a parent, I don't want my kids sitting in front of a television or computer screen all day every day playing computer games. I am against video games that are violent as well.

When I talk about games, this is not only refering to video games as many people believe. The topic  includes board games such as Scrabble, card games like Uno, an even word searches, crossword puzzles, and sudoko. These games can act as tools to aid students and adults in their learning. I don't for a moment suggest that kids should play games instead of learn to read, write, or do arithmetic. What I do believe is that games can act as a very powerful aid in helping kids and even adults to learn skills that are important for their general education, as well as their future educational experiences in life.

Here is an interesting article from Yahoo news about the benefits of games. While the article specifically discusses video games, I believe that many of the ideas shared in the article can be applied to other types of games that were listed above in the previous paragraph. I also believe that the article in no ways suggests games as a replacement for "regular education."  

Here is a link to article. Please share your thoughts and reactions.


http://news.yahoo.com/7-health-benefits-playing-video-games-100500829.html

On the topic of international education, I have recently learned that many people consider Finland to have the greatest educational system in the entire world. I will surely be writing about this idea in future blogs, as I expand my discussions to include topics of education reform in general.

Here is a link to a very insightful documentary on Finland's education system entitled The Finland Phenomenon. Don't be startled by the Spanish in the title. The documentary is all in English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2JGeGNxlh4

Please share your thoughts on this documentary or any other ideas about education reform or game design you may have. Could such a system work in the United States? What can we as individuals learn from Finland in terms of how we educate our children? Are games an idea that Finland educators use, and if so how?

Here is a response to a recent question I had about cultural differences in education.

Teaching is a cultural activity. Some people think of teaching as an innate skill, something you are born with. Others think that teachers learn to teach by enrolling in college teacher-training programs. Teaching is a cultural activity because it is learned through informal participation over long periods of time. It is something one learns to do more by growing up in a culture than by studying it formally.

       

      As a continuation to the above question about teaching being a cultural activity, here are some observations done from a study called TIMSS.  TIMSS stands for Third International Mathematics and Science Study. It was a comprehensive cross-national comparison of achievement study intended to investigate math and science achievement among fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade students in forty-one countries. Here are lessons learned from that study. 

        The major facts learned from the lessons are the following:

       

      In Germany, teachers are in charge of the mathematics, which is quite advanced. In many lessons, teachers lead students through a development of procedures for solving general classes of problems. There is a concern for technique, where technique includes both the rationale that underlies the procedure and the precision with which the procedure is executed. Developing advanced procedures is a good motto for the German teaching method.

      

In Japan, teachers appear to take a less active role, allowing their students to invent their own procedures for solving problems. And these problems are quite demanding, both procedurally, and conceptually. Teachers, however, carefully design and orchestrate lessons so that students are likely to use procedures that have been developed recently in class. This can be called “structured problem solving."

In the U.S. the level of learning is less advanced and requires much less mathematical reasoning than in  the other two countries. Teachers present definitions of terms and demonstrate procedures for solving specific problems. Students are then asked to memorize the definitions and practice the procedures which is why it’s learning motto is  “learning terms and practicing procedures.” 

As this relates to game design, the question arises: Are game principles equal across all cultures, or do they change depending on the culture they are played in? Does varied instruction shape the minds of students to think certain ways, and therefore games need to be designed specifically for people in that culture? Will an educational game designed in America be equally effective for Japanese students?

Please feel free to share your thoughts and any links to information you may have on this topic. 

I encourage everyone to check out the videos of Jane Mcgonigal on her website entitled you found me  which can be accessed through a link under the list of interesting blogs that I follow section. She gives some very interesting talks about game design and how to apply those principles to one's everyday life.

Perhaps the most interesting comment she made was in a video delivered to the School of Life. In that video she talks about a concept called PERMA. PERMA is an acronym that stands for Positive Energy Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. In her talk, she proposes that these emotions, which according to scientists are what people need in order to flourish, are the same emotions we feel when we play games.

An interesting thought indeed that makes sense. I wonder if she would say that a person who loses a game feels the same emotions. I also wonder if this applies just to video games, or to sports games, word games, and other types of board games as well.

I wonder how we can design games to give people these positive emotions even if they lose? Perhaps the answer is in her book entitled Reality is Broken.

Share your thoughts on whether you believe in the power of games to help kids learn. Do you feel PERMA when you play games? For educators, do you find this to be an effective instructional method? Does it matter if they win or lose?

Relating this discussion to the topic of games, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, it was discovered that a whopping 97%of American kids between ages 12 and 17 play games. (Information taken from Now You See It, by Cathy Davidson p. 145)

Here is a link to an organization called Institute of Play that works to make new forms of learning that are more engaging and game oriented.

http://www.instituteofplay.org/

As part of the discussion of understanding why technology and games can help kids learn better, I would like to share with you a very humorous, (but unfortunate) cartoon of a representation of our educational system. This post is courtesy of my friend Bryan Schuett from Minnesota.

Enjoy the picture, and thanks for sending it Bryan!