Thompson: Gates Is Right On Common Core & Student Engagement

Bill Gates' speech to the Education Commission of the States includes an ebullient endorsement of Common Core that I read as "not wrong," and an endorsement of peer review that I see as a step in the right direction. Some of Gates' vision for technology, I believe, merits full-throated praise: 

"Imagine if kids poured their time and passion into a video game that taught them math concepts while they barely noticed because it was so enjoyable... The goal of the game is to rescue animals whose ships are stuck in outer space. The ships require different amounts of fuel, powered by lasers. So the players have to manipulate fractions to split the lasers into the right amount of fuel." (see full text here).

Of course, there are a couple of things missing from the Gates vision.  I would remind Gates that teachers have a lot of other ways of assessing student mastery.  The best way is conversing with the student. And I would remind him that the optimal way to make his vision a reality is to recruit adults, with all types of skills (including, but not limited to computers), to pioneer "win win" innovations, as opposed to using technology for command and control. Rather that focusing on our schools' and our governance systems' weaknesses, why not build on the creativity that invented those digital miracles?- JT(@drjohnthompson) via.  

Comments

[Ian]

Great as Bill Gates´ vision is, he´s not the only person at the ball game. only two weeks ago French-Norwegian game-based learning company WeWantToKnow signed an agreement with the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington to establish a strong partnership to test and develop more revolutionary math games in addition to the recently launched DragonBox,

"We are very excited to have signed an agreement with one of the leading game and science centers in the US to help us test our products across over 100 schools in the US educational market," says Jean-Baptiste Huynh, CEO and co-founder for WeWantToKnow.

"Our first math game, DragonBox, has received incredible reviews, and we see from our tests in Norway that between 60-80% of the kids that play the game for two hours are then able to solve mathematical equations. We believe that with the support from the Center for Game Science, we will be able to increase this result to close to 100%.”

"I was truly impressed with DragonBox from the minute I first tested it," says Zoran Popović, Director of the Center for Game Science. "This game focuses on one of the core concepts in Algebra, presenting it in a clever way that is accessible to children and very likely to be transferable to real math problems. We look forward to working with WeWantToKnow on the student-adaptive version of this game and deploying it in school trials across the US. I believe that as early as next year, we can have second-graders mastering key algebra concepts with just a few hours of gameplay. The Center for Game Science has been focusing on fractions and other early math bottlenecks in K-12 education, and our partnership with WeWantToKnow is the perfect next step in developing a game-based mathematics curriculum suitable for every child.”

Game-based learning is set to be become an essential part of education in the 21st century. Immediate feedback, differentiated learning paths, and active involvement through experiential and discovery learning are just some of the vital benefits that game-based learning can provide.

DragonBox is one of the first games to communicate powerful mathematical concepts through the use of mathematics in gameplay. It leads that innovation by presenting mathematics with contemporary visual design and a finely tuned user experience that has proven positive consequences on how fast and from what age students can learn difficult subjects.

With WeWanToKnow´s revolutionary approach concepts that once required months or years to master are now easily attainable by young children in just a few hours.

For more information or to speak to Jean-Baptiste Huyhn, please email Ian McMonagle at www.wewanttoknow.com

[Sarah]

I think, if you want, what is to my mind, the best example of games as education, look at what Valve’s done with the Portal series. Encouraging experiments, teaching spatial reasoning better than a textbook ever could... that is a success. And its objective was never even to be educational.