Forbes – Jordan Shapiro
“One of the big problems with education has to do with content. It is not a problem with the quality of content, the delivery of information, nor access to knowledge. It is a problem with the way we understand what we mean when we think about learning. To solve this problem, we first need to be clear that there’s no such thing as educational content. Content is always neutral. It doesn’t become educational until there is an interaction. And there is a particular way of interacting with content that constitutes an educational engagement. A great deal of the excitement around game-based learning is because video games are interactive. Thus, they appear to be inherently more educational than a text book. But they’re not; that’s a misconception. Just because students learn something through interactive digital play does not mean that games are always educational. Certainly most research shows that video games designed for learning are often more effective than a textbook. But even games that have proven their ability to teach mathematics, for instance, are not, in themselves, educational.”(more)