Skip to main content

Games that teach

As children spend time learning from digital methods - like playing games on the iPad or tablet etc., a moot question comes to mind. Are they learning? If so, how much and what?

This really is a sequel to my post of yesterday where I figured how 'Subway Surfers' is making the little ones think about resources and resource allocation. They have a limited number of gold coins that they have accumulated by playing which can be used to 'buy' various things. Some of them useful, some useful, some worthwhile, some just embellishments. So, there are various temptations that are 'short term gains'. Should they go for the short term gains or wait for their 'long term goal'? The younger one is all for short term gains while the elder one wants to wait.

And this is not the only game. In many games they have to try out a particular maneuver many times before they get it right. They need to wait and see a pattern before they jump into something. They need to try out various strategies before one succeeds. And I am sure, that is a very limited range of the things they need to do. Many a times, they go through a maze before finally hitting a eureka moment.

And this sort of learning is better than learning that is taught. Somewhere as parents, it might be a great way to integrate learnings from some games back to them (but I am yet to figure out how). Right now, I have opened my eyes to the various types of learning that happens in games. And this happens in a world that they are completely in charge of - where, if at all they fail, all that happens is one more attempt or some more perseverance and what better safe arena to try out than in a game?

Does it teach them a little planning? Or perseverance? Surely, the games will not teach them everything, but perhaps at some point, their mind will pull in all these experiences together?

I think it will...

Clearly the debate between whether the iPad is a waste of time is not going to end anytime soon, but the answer like in everything else lies in moderation. And secondly, technology is going to be around - and we are better off trying to make friends of it than enemies. And in any case, this interactive technology is far far better than watching non-interactive television. And moving away from television is a world of good anyway...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and

The Mintzberg triangle

At a recent training, someone spoke about the Mintzberg triangle. I located it here . Image from that page reproduced here. The page linked above has a better explanation of diagram above, but what intrigued me was that the triangle exists for practically anything. The facilitator referred to this in the context of facilitation. Of how facilitation has science, craft and art to it. That is so true,  I thought. Worth a thought! Need to read of Mintzberg though...

Waigaya and Sangen Shugi - Honda

Two big takeaways from Driving Honda were Waigaya and Sangen Shugi. A few days ago, we were working on a strategy module for a company. As we leafed through old and new theories and books around the same - one comment which caught my eye was Henry Mintzbergs comment where he says "Strategy is like weeds, it has to grow all around your company" A lot of times organisations dip into their pool of employees (and sometimes customers) and solicit ideas from them. This happens either at an offsite or a meeting or some quarterly review and the ideas pile up. Most companies today have an innovation program that encourages bottom up ideation. Many of these ideas are future strategy - provided someone is listening. Sometimes these ideas are not immediately implementable - but if one keeps looking, there might be valuable stuff in there. And if (post such programs) ideas die very often, the motivation of someone to keep doing it will also diminish. Waigaya is what Honda call