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critical thinking communication
collaboration and creativity these are
the skills that will drive our economy
in the future these are the skills that
will prepare young people today for the
world of tomorrow these are called 21st
century skills these have been studied
and discussed at the highest level of
the educational system and have been
examined by some of the leading experts
on pedagogy but integrating them into
modern public education is still a
struggle it's still a problem we're
working desperately to solve but you
know what the first time I heard that
list critical thinking communication
collaboration and creativity I thought
to myself those are all things we
practice every day in games every day
when you see someone play call of duty
or League of Legends with their friends
you're seeing someone who's practicing
communication and collaboration when you
see a child to build a monument in
Minecraft they're exploring how to use
their creativity when someone plays
Portal or Magic the Gathering or even
something like risk they're honing their
critical thinking ability we've got to
be able to bring this to bear for
education we've got to use the things
that games are so good at to reinforce
the skills people in the future will so
desperately need the problem is that
right now as good as games are and
getting us to practice these skills they
end up having very little impact on
people's lives because most people
playing them don't realize they're
practicing them they don't realize that
the skills they use for the game are
applicable in their real lives
this concept is sometimes referred to as
transference or transfer of practice
it's a well-known phenomenon in the
educational world
it's just that often they're looking at
it going the other way for decades now
schools have been facing the problem of
having students who will do all right on
a math test but not make the connection
that that knowledge can be applied to
many of their activities outside the
schoolroom walls in games we have to
look at it the other way almost every
game has lessons applicable to life but
we don't make the connection as often as
we need to games like Final Fantasy
Tactics or hearthstone teaches about
order of operations World of Warcraft
teaches us discipline teamwork and often
management skills even games like
Farmville teach us how to function
within a routine but as players we
almost never see that there's no
transference there we've been trained to
check out when we play these games so
how do we harness their learning
potential in schools well the most
obvious way is to beat the student over
the head with the fact that they are
learning something which is what most
edutainment does today but big surprise
that method is pretty terrible so we got
to find another route and while I would
love to offer you fancy design tricks
for making that happen there's actually
a much simpler solution teachers
teachers are just as important
more important in a game enabled
classroom in a classroom that utilizes
games games can be the part of the
lesson that gets kids excited about
ideas and teaches them fundamental
concepts while teachers make that
knowledge meaningful teachers in such a
classroom would relate the things
students learnt in games to the real
world and build off those concepts
reinforcing them and structuring them as
tools to be applied to problems later in
life hopefully in a classroom that
integrates them games could also free up
teachers to spend more one-on-one time
with students while the class played the
teacher could have meaningful
conversations with small groups or sit
with students who are struggling and
explain to them the concepts they're
finding hard to grasp as a designer
creating games for the classroom you
should be enabling and empowering the
teacher because there's no silver bullet
to education and games aren't gonna
solve everything but if you build your
experiences with a teacher in mind
there's an incredible amount we can do
to make a teacher's job easier which
brings us back to 21st century skills
the key struggle with 21st century
skills is that they can't be learned by
rote they can only be learned by
experience and games by their
interactive nature provide us with a
platform for students to have that
experience in a way that a textbook or a
lecture does not through games these
21st century skills critical thinking
communication collaboration and
creativity can even be taught while
other subjects are being presented a
game on science can get students to
practice collaboration a game on history
and make students think about how they
communicate a game on math could make us
hone our critical reasoning and a game
on art could push our creativity in an
interactive environment we might not
even have to carve out large chunks of
time to build 21st century skills into
our curriculum so when someone asks you
why we should have games in the
classroom tell them about the 21st
century skills tell them about how
important it is that we integrate them
into our education how important it is
that we prepare the students of today
for the world they'll be entering a
world more based on things like
communication and collaboration than
learning by rote tell them how these
skills can't simply be memorized or
learned out of a textbook
how they must be practiced tell them how
powerful a tool as an interactive medium
games can be to practice these very
skills and if they play games tell them
they're practicing these skills
themselves already every day see you
next week
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