I let out an audible whoop when I hit the Crusader Kings reference--I love The Argument. I think people will find an increasingly rich selection of deep historical board games as well, whether about queer relationships in 1700s London (Molly House), the devastating housing policies of Robert Moses (Cross-Bronx Expressway), or the operation of the East India Company and its abuses of power in India (John Company). In fact, I think historical games are often the best entry point for getting into complex history, since you inhabit a specific role and feel their pressures, incentives, and problems in a direct way.
I also came here to talk about historical board games. Twilight Struggle was my entry to historical games when I was late middle / early high school, and then I went deep into historical wargames. Historical wargames both taught me about history and spurred me to learn more on my own. Ditto for Diplomacy when I was in high school (even though it's so abstract). Many of these are too complex for elementary school but definitely doable for middle school and up.
About half way through 23-24 I replaced computer time with fun books. To be honest it solved a lot of problems. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d be negotiating video game time when I wanted to adopt Chromebooks back in 14-15. It’s insane to me that this is the route we’ve taken.
I’ll still defend computers for testing and it solves a really terrible scheduling mess. If you’re testing for retention and you have to ship your test packets to the doe it’s a real problem. You have to test in the first of April to get them back in time for summer school with mandatory retention which leads to a terrible no ela in April almost no math in March to review everything and finish. There’s also good learning projects to be done that really aren’t gamified at all and non-trivial applications.
I saw a quote recently that sums up how policymakers make decisions about tech in schools.
Somewhere in a state legislature two committees are working on legislation. One committee is drafting AI literacy standards that require students to be proficient users of AI. The other committee is writing a law that limits high school students screen time to ten hours a month.
Still, I’d be interested to know what Kelsey thinks about how schools might best prepare kids for an AI-rich future, since her main beat is AI.
Somehow AoPS / Beast Academy manages to be both genuinely fun and engaging and extremely rigorous math instruction without ever succumbing to gamification in the pursuit of engagement. There is probably a lesson there for how other edtech should work.
Also, if you want to teach kids the basics of probability theory through sampling with and without replacement, Quacks of Quedlinburg is a super effective and super fun vehicle for that.
Also also, why don't more classes use podcasts as part of their educational armamentarium? Kids love getting stories told to them, and modern popular podcast hosts are hyperselected for extreme skill at telling gripping stories. Start early enough with the likes of Greeking Out and you may, to take a random example totally unrelated to my own life, find yourself on road trips listening to Episode 51 out of 320 of the fan-created Byzantine sequel to Mike Duncan's History of Rome...
Opus Magnum and the rest of the Zachtronics collection are fantastic! If only Zach Barth could figure out how to make the process of writing a research paper as compelling as his programming/engineering puzzles.
I agree there is some bad edtech in the world. My problem is that some nervous parents are making the jump to "all ed tech is bad." And also, because this is more true at the younger ages, creating policies and laws that are counter-productive to learning in later grades.
This article didn't get into what I assumed it would, which is that while it's fine for some school work to be in the form of a game, most of it should not. School is partly about learning content and a range of skills, but it's also about acquiring a work ethic. Not all learning will be fun, just as much of life isn't fun. But we can't only do what's fun if we want a good life. Kids need to learn that you can knuckle down and do what needs to be done and there's a sense of accomplishment that can come from that. It's about delayed gratification. Knowing you can work through the frustration, learn hard things, and overcome obstacles is perhaps the most valuable lesson of all. You can't gamify a good life.
As a video game nerd, I know that good games are very hard to make, and the history of companies making good games for kids is not great. Typing games can be great, as can history games as josh says. but the history of kids games in general isn't amazing - for every good kids game there are 100 games that are absolute trash. As a parent it was challenging finding games that were geared towards an elementary school kid that didn't totally suck. She would play animal crossing and Kirby and that's about it - most of the other stuff I tried was busted and janky.
I let out an audible whoop when I hit the Crusader Kings reference--I love The Argument. I think people will find an increasingly rich selection of deep historical board games as well, whether about queer relationships in 1700s London (Molly House), the devastating housing policies of Robert Moses (Cross-Bronx Expressway), or the operation of the East India Company and its abuses of power in India (John Company). In fact, I think historical games are often the best entry point for getting into complex history, since you inhabit a specific role and feel their pressures, incentives, and problems in a direct way.
EU4 in every classroom!
I also came here to talk about historical board games. Twilight Struggle was my entry to historical games when I was late middle / early high school, and then I went deep into historical wargames. Historical wargames both taught me about history and spurred me to learn more on my own. Ditto for Diplomacy when I was in high school (even though it's so abstract). Many of these are too complex for elementary school but definitely doable for middle school and up.
About half way through 23-24 I replaced computer time with fun books. To be honest it solved a lot of problems. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d be negotiating video game time when I wanted to adopt Chromebooks back in 14-15. It’s insane to me that this is the route we’ve taken.
I’ll still defend computers for testing and it solves a really terrible scheduling mess. If you’re testing for retention and you have to ship your test packets to the doe it’s a real problem. You have to test in the first of April to get them back in time for summer school with mandatory retention which leads to a terrible no ela in April almost no math in March to review everything and finish. There’s also good learning projects to be done that really aren’t gamified at all and non-trivial applications.
I saw a quote recently that sums up how policymakers make decisions about tech in schools.
Somewhere in a state legislature two committees are working on legislation. One committee is drafting AI literacy standards that require students to be proficient users of AI. The other committee is writing a law that limits high school students screen time to ten hours a month.
Still, I’d be interested to know what Kelsey thinks about how schools might best prepare kids for an AI-rich future, since her main beat is AI.
I think you're going to need to get rid of homework and extend the school day.
To make sure kids are actually doing the work in a proper environment
One with no cell phones or other internet connected personal devices
You just aren't gonna get learning otherwise.
Somehow AoPS / Beast Academy manages to be both genuinely fun and engaging and extremely rigorous math instruction without ever succumbing to gamification in the pursuit of engagement. There is probably a lesson there for how other edtech should work.
Also, if you want to teach kids the basics of probability theory through sampling with and without replacement, Quacks of Quedlinburg is a super effective and super fun vehicle for that.
Also also, why don't more classes use podcasts as part of their educational armamentarium? Kids love getting stories told to them, and modern popular podcast hosts are hyperselected for extreme skill at telling gripping stories. Start early enough with the likes of Greeking Out and you may, to take a random example totally unrelated to my own life, find yourself on road trips listening to Episode 51 out of 320 of the fan-created Byzantine sequel to Mike Duncan's History of Rome...
Opus Magnum and the rest of the Zachtronics collection are fantastic! If only Zach Barth could figure out how to make the process of writing a research paper as compelling as his programming/engineering puzzles.
I agree there is some bad edtech in the world. My problem is that some nervous parents are making the jump to "all ed tech is bad." And also, because this is more true at the younger ages, creating policies and laws that are counter-productive to learning in later grades.
This article didn't get into what I assumed it would, which is that while it's fine for some school work to be in the form of a game, most of it should not. School is partly about learning content and a range of skills, but it's also about acquiring a work ethic. Not all learning will be fun, just as much of life isn't fun. But we can't only do what's fun if we want a good life. Kids need to learn that you can knuckle down and do what needs to be done and there's a sense of accomplishment that can come from that. It's about delayed gratification. Knowing you can work through the frustration, learn hard things, and overcome obstacles is perhaps the most valuable lesson of all. You can't gamify a good life.
As a video game nerd, I know that good games are very hard to make, and the history of companies making good games for kids is not great. Typing games can be great, as can history games as josh says. but the history of kids games in general isn't amazing - for every good kids game there are 100 games that are absolute trash. As a parent it was challenging finding games that were geared towards an elementary school kid that didn't totally suck. She would play animal crossing and Kirby and that's about it - most of the other stuff I tried was busted and janky.