Videogames as Education and World Peace

I agree with James Gee that it's a problem that big gaps exist between high-performing and low-performing students as they go through their own "Cycle of Expertise," which schools do not address very well.  On the high end, students are bored and school time is wasted.  On the low end, classes move on before students can comprehend the material, and they fall further and further behind as new material is introduced.  Videogames are a way to tailor learning to the pace at which each student is comfortable acquiring knowledge and expertise, while providing a feeling of ownership over each student's own learning. 

I particularly liked what Gee said about risk taking.  Although the American school system allows more room for failure and recovery than many other countries' education systems, our students are still constrained by many factors, including lack of time to make mistakes and then correct them in our regimented grade-level advancement system and the need to learn to pass standardized tests.  Videogames allow for more trial and error and risk taking, which are great ways to learn.  I remember that in my school experience, half the time I didn't truly learn something until I had already gotten it wrong on a test and had the teacher then explain why I got it wrong.

Interactive learning cannot entirely replace other types of more tedious learning.  As nice as it is to engage students in their learning, students need to be prepared for the inevitable adult, real world tasks that are not engaging and tailored to their learning styles.  For instance, reading a credit card contract will never, ever be easy, entertaining, or within anyone's ongoing cycle of expertise.  Neither will legal briefs, medical diagnoses, and reading comprehension passages on the GRE.  Education needs to reach out to students and learn to exploit students' agility with games, but students will always need to know how to mow through unwieldy learning situations.  So videogames, or simulated learning environments, are a good complement to other education tools, but as the educational tool, they fall short in preparing students for the real world.  Not that I think Gee expects videogames to replace other types of learning.  I think he intended only to introduce videogames as a phenomenon that should be viewed as a serious learning tool whose core characteristics should be incorporated into school curricula.

I thought that Jane McGonigal's presentation was very energetic and engaging, and I liked how her company creates simulations for possible real world problems...my only reservation is that I really don't like to sit and play videogames and I know I am not the only one.  So gamers and the rest of the problem solvers out there that won't play videogames will have to figure out how to come together to save the world...