SPORE AND SCIENCE
Released yesterday was Spore, the latest and greatest in what has been some of the most influential, creative--and yes--educational games made.Will Wright, the mastermind behind all of the Sim games (SimCity, The Sims, etc.), has gone above and beyond the traditional "Sim" games with the release of Spore.
Spore is an ultimate creative tool. It allows the learner/gamer to design an almost infinite variety of organisms using the game's very dynamic tools. This organism, and the gamer, evolve through the game's five stages: cellular, creature, tribe, civilization, and space. As if exploring creation and interaction wasn't enough with any one of these stages, we get to experience all five of them! I just bought my copy today, and am anxious to get playing with it.
Games like Spore rejuvinate the idea that video games can indeed be used, and be used very effectively, for learning.
I ran across an article today in Wired by Clive Thompson that takes a look at how video games, especially complex systems in games, inspire scientific method techniques in gamers who explore and often seek to exploit these systems. From the article:
More than half the gamers [in Lineage, a role-playing game] used "systems-based reasoning" -- analyzing the game as a complex, dynamic system. And one-tenth actually constructed specific models to explain the behavior of a monster or situation; they would often use their model to generate predictions. Meanwhile, one-quarter of the commentors would build on someone else's previous argument, and another quarter would issue rebuttals of previous arguments and models.One of the most interesting points of the article is that the gamers most often didn't even understand how scientific their reasoning and procedures were.
These are all hallmarks of scientific thought.
Games like Spore (when used in moderation, just like everything else) will healthily continue to inspire creativity and unlock potential for young minds, or maybe even the slightly older minds :)
posted by Cahlan at
6:53 PM
3 Comments:
I think you've hit on one of the hallmark challenges of capitalizing on the motivational and educational potential of gaming environments here: "most of them didn't even realize how scientific their thinking was."
Are they really learning scientific reasoning skills if they don't know they are? If they can't articulate their strategies, will they be able to use them in other situations?
Good point.
Do we need to know that we're using the scientific method in order to solve a problem?
My thought is almost the reverse: do you have to know that you've just learned a scientific reasoning skill to say that you've just learning something?
Although I don't agree with having to formally learn something in order to solve a problem (we do it all the time), I do see your point about articulation, mostly with teaching though. If you can't articulate your strategy, it will be more difficult to pass it on to someone else.
Although in this example, the gamers seemed very able to articulate (hence the discussion/rebuttals) and solve problems even though they didn't realize they were using some classic methods of scientific thought to do so.
I would LOVE to look into whether [as a teacher] pointing out said classical scientific reasoning strategies to kids would foster or kill their enthusiasm for the game...
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