On this show we've often discussed the benefit that games can have for education, but we've rarely gotten the chance to go into specifics
So for the next month, We're gonna do just that. Over the coming weeks
We're going to be touching on four concrete problems that educators face
Problems which have come up time and again during James's year with games for good. The first of these problems is the fear of failure
Right now much of the way our educational system is set up
Inculcates a fear of failure. It teaches you to be afraid of being wrong rather than seeing your mistakes as an opportunity to improve
This does not prepare us for the 21st century
Homework is the quintessential example of this
Imagine how the typical homework assignment goes. You get something assigned to you, you take it home, you do it, and you turn it in
A week later you get it back with a grade on it
No chance to revise or redo because by the time you get it back
It's time to move on to the next thing
You better have gotten it right on the first try or you're simply punished with a bad grade
Often homework serves more as an assessment than a learning opportunity
Now compare that to how we learn in games
Think about how many times you've missed a jump and immediately gotten back up to try it again
Think about how many challenges and games you've failed only to try a new tactic or experiment with a different solution
You weren't trained to fear that failure, you were trained to overcome it. And failure still had consequences
This was no lovey-dovey everyone's a winner experience
But you were taught that what mattered was finding a solution to the problem in front of you as quickly as possible, rather than just
getting it right on the first try
The important thing here is that the problems in video games ask you can you find a way to solve this rather than do you?
Know the solution, which is the approach most homework in our schools takes.
Each problem in a game is a chance to learn and improve rather than simply a test to see if you already have the knowledge
Required to solve it. This approach, the approach that games provide, is vastly more beneficial for education as it allows homework to be a learning
opportunity rather than simply reinforcement or assessment
It's pretty much impossible to do that in Modern classrooms as they are now
Often teachers only have a very limited amount of time just enough to grade the work they give out
They can't be giving the type of Instantaneous feedback that students need to be able to rapidly iterate on problems and test out new
Solutions or theories they might have, and that's absolutely not the fault of teachers
But it is an artifact of our educational systems past that persistence to today
When our educational system was created
Nearly 200 years ago, this sort of drill was the only option and schooling itself was preparing young people to enter careers that were
more dependent on learning things by rote
Factory work, basic shopkeeping, it was preparing them for a world where you couldn't just look up something on the internet or hop onto Wikipedia
Today ,on the other hand, we need to prepare students to find innovative solutions. We need to prepare them to apply the limitless data
We have in front of us to solve whatever problem is at hand
It doesn't matter if it's a job in it or the most esoteric medical research almost all of our decent jobs today require innovation
They require you to find answers to problems. You've never seen before and for that
You need to see failure as an opportunity to learn rather than something to be afraid of, Today with computers and especially with games
We provide the opportunity to take a lot of the workload off teachers to free them up to actually teach instead of being tied up
in the busy work of grading homework that could be done by a machine, a machine that could respond instantly and tell the students the
Moment they try something whether or not they're correct. With games especially
Digital ones we provide the opportunity to create that rapid feedback
Cycle that allows students to focus on iterating on their mistakes and learning through their failures. So we don't simply present them with assessments
But rather use our assessment time not only to assess, but to provide learning opportunities
So when somebody asks you why we should consider using games in schools?
Absolutely tell them how much more engaging we can make the classroom
but that's something they probably already know so also tell them that we can finally do away with a classroom that instills in students a
Fear of failure that we can finally be done with a classroom environment that discourages
Students from taking risks that lead to discovery and instead prepare them to innovate for the future
That we can free teachers of the burden of creating rote homework and instead let them focus on their real job:
Teaching. That through games we can get kids experimenting exploring and discovering
Freely and perhaps for doing so, get them to love learning rather than fear it. See you next week