In the future, students can dismiss stories of climate-related school closings as folklore.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to experiment with edtech, but we still don't know if going to school virtually with a laptop at the kitchen table offers the same benefits as being in a classroom. A recent study found that only 27% of schools asked teachers to monitor student attendance and 37% were required to make 1: 1 recordings on an ongoing basis.
Can education in a post-pandemic world become more accessible, asynchronous and persistent? Or will our digital divide worsen existing inequalities in our education system?
To examine the issue, four TipsClear staff looked at the future of advanced technology and distance learning:
- Diviner coldewey
- Natasha Mascarenhas
- Alex Wilhelm
- Danny Crichton
Devin Coldewey: the game will transform distance learning, but stigma must be fought
When I was a kid, we played SimCity in a computer class after we finished our typing lessons, the five paragraph essays and so on. I always thought I was going fast by going through the homework and going straight to building my city, but the truth is that I learned just as much with one as with the other. The game tricked me into learning about the city's infrastructure, taxes and other civic concepts that I would probably have fallen asleep if I had read about them.
As a preschool teacher, I found myself on the other side of this phenomenon, finding ways to pass the learning on my small loads without boring them - and they were easily bored. It was always best to learn by doing, but kids don't do anything unless it's fun.
The pandemic is not only affecting higher education; Grade 4 and middle school students are also sidelined - not to mention their teachers. Play must be part of the solution.
Our education system has a kind of integrated fun / learning relationship that is diminishing over the years, because many of the tools we use to teach basic concepts are dated and static. There are a few "educational" products if children are lucky enough to have iPads or laptops to use them, but not enough, and they are clearly of a lower order than the real games that children do. play all the time. When a child's hobby is playing something like Fortnite or Breath of the Wild, does an algebra spreadsheet dressed like a 2002 Flash game really seem like more than work?
Educational games are stuck on the idea of adding fun to old teaching methods instead of rethinking how learning can be accomplished outside of these methods. Yet the possibilities of teaching using remote presence and virtual worlds are staggering.
A simple and laudable example is the educational mode of Ubisoft, present in its last two Assassin's Creed games taking place in ancient Egypt and classic Athens. For all that they have been considered AAA games, these surprisingly detailed sandboxes offer the value of a full university course in anthropology and history; in fact, there is a special non-violent mode only for exploring these aspects of the game.
Imagine telling a class full of 14 year olds that their mission was to play Assassin's Creed for an hour a day, find something interesting, research it and write a paragraph about it. Or build a functional rocket in the Kerbal space program. Or complete a series of puzzles in The Witness and list the hidden rules that govern them. Or work with three other children to build a school model in Minecraft or Roblox .
Right now, it's practically unthinkable (outside of a few avant-garde classrooms), in part because the culture around the game is strange, poisonous, and few people take the medium seriously for any purpose. educational. But if distance learning is now part of kindergarten to grade 12 education - and we better plan this - we need to meet the kids where they are, not try to distort them in a mold mold there a century ago.
It is difficult to visualize because the "real" games are not designed for education, except as a secondary consideration. But virtual worlds are becoming places for more than the competition, and embracing this from the start, involving educators and students to see what is needed and how these needs can be met, will be a fruitful path for the industry. .
