Good News: School Uses Video Games to Teach

And everybody is positive about it.

Posted by Staff
Good News: School Uses Video Games to Teach
Popular Science is running a fascinating slice of good news about the Quest to Learn school, which opened last September in Manhattan. It uses video games, almost exclusively to teach sixth graders.

The school describes itself as follows, "Quest to Learn is a school for digital kids. It is a community where students learn to see the world as composed of many different kinds of systems. It is a place to play, invent, grow, and explore", we assume it means real kids as it seems a waste of cash to educate digital ones.

The basis for the process is called 'Codewords' described as, "Students practice decoding, authoring, manipulating, and unlocking meaning in coded worlds, to meet shared needs or for their own purposes. Work in this learning context requires students to practice with the concept of language and literacy across disciplines, from math to ELA to computer programming.

"Codeworlds draws on games as learning environments that produce meaning through the interpretation of symbolic codes ordering our world. As students reflect on how the underlying rules of a system shape expression and communication, they gain experience in comprehending the world as a meta-system made up of multiple systems, each containing a set of values, assumptions, and perspectives."

Full feature here.

See more about the school here.

Comments

Olly East 11 Jan 2010 23:07
1/1
puzzle games have always been there not to help learning directly but to challange ur mind its bout time ppl realise its not just sitting infront of a screen shooting all the time
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