Guilt-Free Games
By Kay Howell
These holidays I’m in the same boat as many of my fellow parents. Our kids are pestering us to buy the latest alien-war-car-crash video games. We shudder with guilt — knowing we’ll cave in and buy them anyway.
I hear a lot about this from my friends. They know I am part of a movement that could get them out of their guilt for supporting a $7 billion a year industry that doesn’t seem one of the nobler results of the digital age. I am working with dozens of experts to develop prototype learning games that can make learning as engrossing and challenging as today’s popular video games.
Why am I optimistic? I spent twenty years in computing in the Dept. of Defense. The military pioneered use simulation for training, including pilots, sonar operators, to war planning. Only the military has the courage to call multi-million dollar training exercises “games.” The U.S. Army hired top guns in the gaming field to develop America’s Army. Developed as a recruiting game tool — wit over 4 million registered players — it is now also used for training.
From DOD I went to a White House job coordinating computer and networking research. I had the good fortune of working with many of the Nation’s top IT researchers and technology company leaders. Thanks to their contributions to IT over the past two decades virtually every sector of the U.S. economy has transformed itself through smart use of IT to better understand their customers, personalize their products, and improve productivity — except education.
Now I direct the Learning Federation at the Federation of American Scientists. We were tasked by Congress to lay out a plan to marshal the best talent in universities, corporations and government, to build the research knowledge and IT tools that can dramatically improve how Americans teach and learn. Over two years, with over 70 experts, we devised a national “road map” to achieve this goal within a decade. The project is part of FAS’ mission to assure that Americans benefit from our world-leading science and technology in socially responsible ways.
I’m optimistic that key features of games can be used to help kids and adults learn real skills. Research shows that students learn better when they are challenged. Students’ learning improves when they get immediate feedback on how they are doing. Research also shows that timeon- task leads to better performance. Today’s sophisticated video games are both challenging and notoriously addictive. Games draw players in by making them master progressively harder challenges within one game, and from one game to the next. Games provide immediate feedback, as well as ways to figure what you did wrong and the chance to recover and try again.
It’s heartening that so many skilled commercial game builders are turning their skills to educational games. At our recent Games for Health conference we saw examples of how the health field is beginning to adopt games to educate people, help people adopt healthier life styles, and even train surgeons. A “Serious Games Summit” last fall drew about 500; presenters covered games for political action, environmental awareness, health, military, and other applications.
Finally, I am optimistic because some in Washington understand that in order to meet our Nation’s critical need for better student achievement and a highly skilled workforce we must find ways to making learning more accessible and more effective. The only affordable way to do this is to take advantage of advances in IT to re-think how we teach and learn. Legislation now in the House and Senate would launch the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust. The legislation would create a trust, funded by public revenue from spectrum auctions and fees, to extend the IT revolution throughout the US education and training enterprise. Major corporations, foundations and other institutions must also step up the needed investment, too.
Many of the same technologies used by U.S. businesses industries to re-design and re-define themselves should become routine within education and training. Doing so will require work — to build the needed R&D capacity and adapt IT tools to meet the needs of teachers and students. But the rewards will be (in the words of my daughter) “totally awesome”.
So I tell my fellow parents: Watch the shelves. In just a few years, you may find some good games that kids want — and haul them to the checkout counter guilt free.
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