For more than a decade, professor David Williamson Shaffer has been trying to change the world, one video game at a time.
And he has his work cut for him. Shaffer is not just trying to change kids, but the very school system that teaches them.
“The fundamental premise of school is that there are these disciplines–math, science, history–and these are the building blocks of anything we have to do later on,” Shaffer said. “Kids’ jobs are to master these basics.”
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But Shaffer has a problem with this premise, and it’s a bombshell: Using this approach, our schools are not preparing our kids to be successful in today’s high-charged, high-tech world.
“The problem is that these disciplines come from the Middle Ages,” he said. “The kinds of things kids need to know and understand are much different than they were 20 or 50 or certainly 150 years ago, when schools were designed.”
Those basic school subjects are not nearly as valuable today as they once were.
“These standardized skills are exactly the things that can be done anywhere else in the world for less money,” Shaffer said.
Rather than learning basics like math, science and history, he thinks our kids would be better prepared for success as adults if they were taught to think about real problems the way specialized professionals think about them.
“Unless we raise the bar on educational achievement,” Shaffer said, “our kids and our economy will be left behind.”
His solution?
Video games.
For the past 10 years, Shaffer has been creating and researching the effects of computer games that immerse kids in virtual worlds that require them to solve real-world problems of specific professions.
The key is “using computer games to prepare children for a life of innovation and creativity rather than giving them standardized skills for life in the factory,” he said.
“We can create worlds where players learn to think in innovative and creative ways about important topics.”
Specifically, Shaffer’s games immerse young players into the worlds of doctors, lawyers, engineers, journalists and others.
“The world would be a much better place if everyone who graduated from high school understood how to be a reporter and think about various news stories they see,” he said. “Or to understand the way doctors think about problems. We want to give kids a sense about how those people think.”
The games have names like “Digital Zoo,” in which players become a biomechanical engineer and design characters for the next smash-hit animated movie.
In “Urban Science,” players become urban planners and redesign an entire city.
And in “Science.net,” kids become journalists and produce an online science news magazine. Through the game, they create a real Web site.
Details on all of these games are available at Shaffer’s Web site, Epistemic Games (www.epistemicgames.org).
Shaffer has a new book launching this week. It’s called “How Computer Games Help Children Learn,” which expounds on his thoughts.
If you want to buy Shaffer’s games, you can’t yet. They’re not available to the public.
“And that’s mostly a function of funding,” he said. “We hope the first game will be rolling out in 18 months.
“Also, the purpose of the games we design is research. We’re trying to demonstrate the powers of computer games.”
And what is the professor’s research showing?
“We’ve seen results like kids who suddenly get better grades in all their classes. They’ll say thing like they talk to their teachers now, but they were afraid to before. Other kids say they’ve learned to organize their thoughts when they write. Some say they want to become an engineer now.”
There are countless educational computer programs on shelves that help kids learn, but Shaffer laid out the key differentiator between his approach and others’.
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“Most of the games designed for educational purposes help kids get better at the same task that schools have been addressing for a long time. They don’t address how to actually do things in the real world,” he said.
But aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves a little bit in trying to teach 10-year-olds to think like engineers?
“We already choose to have our kids think like historians [in history class], or like cartoon scientists,” Shaffer said. “Or in English class, they’re taught to think like a writer for the New Yorker.
“In thinking like a journalist or an urban planner or a lawyer in society, you prepare kids to enter the workforce as more prepared citizens.”
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Alex L. Goldfayn is host of “The Technology Tailor Show” on WGN-AM 720 on Saturdays from 6 to 8 p.m.