It's great the education secretary backs the use of games in classrooms, but does he actually realise their full potential?
It seems that finally, the Conservative party is learning to love video games. Education secretary Michael Gove recently delivered a speech on the future of education to the Royal Society. Towards the end, he recognised the importance of using digital technology in the classroom, and highlighted the role games can play in teaching:
'Computer games developed by Marcus Du Sautoy are enabling children to engage with complex mathematical problems that would hitherto have been thought too advanced. When children need to solve equations in order to get more ammo to shoot the aliens, it is amazing how quickly they can learn. I am sure that this field of educational games has huge potential for maths and science teaching and I know that Marcus himself has been thinking about how he might be able to create games to introduce advanced concepts, such as non-Euclidean geometry, to children at a much earlier stage than normal in schools.
'The Department for Education is working with the Li Ka Shing Foundation and the highly respected Stanford Research Institute on a pilot programme to use computer programmes to teach maths. We have not developed the programme – we are just helping them run a pilot. Stanford says it is one of the most successful educational projects they have seen.'
The argument caught some in the games industry by surprise. Ian Livingstone, the life president of publisher Square Enix and co-author of Nesta's Next Gen report on the games industry, tweeted, 'Michael Gove in favour of technology AND computer games in the classroom as a learning tool for maths! WOW. Art next?' He has been lobbying parliament for better computer education in schools, including the addition of Computer Science to the National Curriculum. It seems Conservative party thinking might be moving in that direction.
But there are very important limits to the way Gove talks about the use of games. Mary Matthews, the strategy and business development director at UK developer Blitz Games Studios summed it up perfectly in her comment beneath a Gamesindustry.biz story on the Give speech:
'Great to see Michael Gove actually talking about games, but sad that he still thinks their best use is carrot and stick – do the equation and get ammo to shoot the aliens – eat the brussel sprouts and then you can have the Christmas pudding. Using games for motivation is only one facet, let's get him thinking about exploration, experimentation, team building, problem-solving and independent, personalised, differentiated experiences – then we'll really be tapping into the full potential games can offer for learning ...'
The problem is, Gove's speech represents an outdated concept of technology and learning; it is part of a lingering belief that computers should be used merely as information retrieval and reward systems within the traditional education system. But this is a massive waste. Simplified programming languages like Scratch and Kodu are showing how computers and games can be building blocks in all facets of education, allowing children to construct their own interactive experiences.
Livingstone wants to see the return of extracurricular programming clubs, which were hugely popular during the home computer boom of the 1980s. Children need to understand computers, not just as inexplicable technological objects that provide entertainment and information, but as useful tools in all learning processes. And learning how to develop programs and applications has benefits that reach farther than computer literacy. As Antony Cain, a lecturer in games development at Lancaster and Morecambe College, points out in his response to the Gamesindustry.biz story, computer code requires pinpoint written accuracy, so children also pick up literarcy and grammar skills; they learn structure and logic, they learn to organise thought.
But there is something more fundamental here. Learning is no longer a linear commodity, and – like it or not – traditional skills that rely on memorisation and repetition are becoming obsolete in the era of instant information retrieval. Games can teach us how children will need to learn in the digital age; as active agents, using multiple simultaneous interactive sources. In his rather radical paper 'Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age' MIT professor (and creator of Scratch) Mitchel Resnick proposes a total re-think of the classroom space, adopting the modes of the multimedia, multi-tasking era:
'Instead of a centralised-control model (with a teacher delivering information to a roomful of students), we should take a more entrepreneurial approach to learning. Students can become more active and independent learners, with the teacher serving as consultant, not chief executive. Instead of dividing up the curriculum into separate disciplines (maths, science, social studies, language), we should focus on themes and projects that cut across the disciplines taking advantage of the rich connections among different domains of knowledge.'
Resnick envisions a shift from a 'knowledge society' to a 'creative society' in which the general population are active, knowledgeable participants. This is exactly what is happening in games at the moment, with the rise of 'user-generated' content, and build-it-yourself games like LittleBigPlanet and ModNation Racers. Lots of titles now come with level editors allowing users to create and share their own stuff – and in the era of social networking, social news aggregation and interactive TV passive consumption is over. So what place does it have in the classroom?
Gove's view is certainly a step forward – games should be, and indeed are, an important part of education: there are lots of software companies making great educational software, while Channel 4 Education has produced some amazing online titles. But the way games work, the way they're structured, the way they teach players their systems, the way they ask players to engage with the virtual world, and the way they allow social interaction, should also be important pedagogical pointers. Games are, after all, among the most complex systems that children are exposed to – just look at the labyrinthine structure of titles like Lego Star Wars, or the masses of information in RPG games, or the social economies at work in Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters...).
Schools shouldn't be more like games in terms of meta-structure. I'm not talking about gamification – I don't mean that children should get points or badges for turning up; they shouldn't earn XP that unlocks new areas of the building. Margaret Robertson of innovative game design studio Hide&Seek makes a great case against mistaking reductive 'pointification' for games-based learning. No, games teach us that complex systems, and the provision of choices, and working together in co-op groups, can make really tough problems easy and fun to deal with.
Of course, I'm no expert on education. But in a few years time, I'll have to start helping my young sons with their maths homework – I'm secretly hoping that, by then, it will involve playing Angry Birds or Left 4 Dead, or designing an Android app to solve equations. I still have nightmares about SMP text books. Don't make me go back there.
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