Educational Video Games With a Mix of Cool and Purpose
NY Times, November 2, 2009 - By STEFANIE OLSEN - Technology
Gamestar Mechanic is an educational video game that asks players to solve a set of puzzles in order to win enough power to design and create their own video games
Quest to Learn (see links from Institute of Play), a New York City public school focused on game-based learning that opened in New York City this fall. A nonprofit group called the Institute of Play set up the school, and its executive director, Katie Salen, helped design the game with financing from the MacArthur Foundation.
Despite popular titles like Math Blaster, the educational games industry eventually collapsed because of price wars, misguided consolidation and an inability to keep pace with changes introduced by the Web.
James Paul Gee, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin who was an early adviser to the software company Tabula Digita , said that in the last two years the company’s 3-D multiplayer games for math and science have evolved into exercises for improving children’s test scores as the company sought wider adoption.
Quest Atlantis, one of the most widely adopted critical-thinking games in schools, has a science section that deals with water quality. Inside a 3-D national park where the fish are dying, students must interview local interest groups, test water samples and figure out what is happening to the fish. Quest Atlantis was created by Sasha Barab , a professor at Indiana University, with backing from NASA, Food Lion and the MacArthur Foundation. Mr. Barab said the game covers some of the core science curriculum for tests.
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