Beyond The Vivarium: How Gaming Can Drive The Future Of Digital Education
Beyond The Vivarium: How Gaming Can Drive The Future Of Digital Education
Beyond The Vivarium: How Gaming Can Drive The Future Of Digital Education
By Rob Girling
August 27, 2020
Summary
What will students experience from behind the glow of a computer screen? Can digital learning be as effective and engaging as in-person education?
The vast majority of learning software follows a passive view of education: the learner is an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge as efficiently as possible.
While educators have worked to evolve this paradigm in a physical classroom setting, most digital learning experiences still clumsily reflect a pedagogy founded on rote learning.
In his 1980 book "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas," constructivist guru and MIT computing professor Seymour Papert laid out a novel provocation: just as an American child living in Paris for a year might learn to speak French out of necessity, interaction, iteration, and immersion, so too could children learn any other skill, including subjects traditionally taught by more rote means, like math.
In the late 1980s, Papert, Kay, and others worked together under Apple AAPL 's sponsorship on the Vivarium Project, prototyping and developing computer-based, self-directed learning experiences for children.
Newer games built on the Vivarium Project's simulation idea and added other gaming mechanisms to give players the ability to create their own distinct learning experiences.
Computers and digital devices are intrinsically motivational because of their interactive nature and can help learners express creativity while acquiring knowledge.
We need experiential, self-directed, creative digital learning experiences more urgently than ever.
We need the cleverness of game designers and the best educational thinkers to join forces and pioneer new learning methods that are collaborative, cooperative, and rewarding.
As Kay famously suggested, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." When it comes to digital learning experiences, it's high time we did.
Reference
Girling, R. (2020, August 27). Beyond The Vivarium: How Gaming Can Drive The Future Of Digital Education. Retrieved August 29, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/robgirling/2020/08/27/beyond-the-vivarium-how-gaming-can-drive-the-future-of-digital-education/