Making Games To Learn...

Voici une idée qui me trotte dans la tête depuis des années, mais qui va surement se développer !!! J'aurai du en parler plus tôt, mais évidemment, quelqu'un a déjà pris le problème à bras le corps ^_^

 

 

Le jeu vidéo est toujours considéré comme l'ennemi d'un pur point de vue éducatif. Il sert souvent au mieux de récompense (fais tes devoirs et tu pourras jouer), au pire comme une excuse (les jeux ludo éducatif).

 

 

Il y a pourtant un aspect qui n'as pas été exploré dans les salles de classe: faire faire un jeu par les enfants.

 

 

Il suffit d'y réfléchir, la gamme de compétences pour faire un jeu est absolument incroyable d'un pur point de vue éducatif. Cela va des capacités rédactionnelles au développement du sens critique, de l'apprentissage de l'outil informatique a la résolution de problèmes pratiques, des mathématiques au français, de la physique à l'histoire, de la programmation au dessin, de l'autodocumentation a l'apprentissage de l'autonomie etc etc...

 

 

L'école a toujours sur s'approprier les arts pour enseigner différentes choses. Mais seul la production d'un jeu vidéo couvre autant de domaine à la fois tout en ayant l'avantage d'être un catalyseur de motivations pour à peu près tout les enfants !

 

 

Avec des outils appropriés et un programme éducatif bien préparé, j'ai toujours eu la conviction que cette idée serait génial pour une classe de collège par exemple.

 

 

Et c'est exactement ce que Giancarlos Alvarado est en train de faire dans sa classe, au états unis:

 

Children love anything that they can touch and manipulate because it appeals to their developing tactile sense and motor skills. Video games can provide children with the kind of creative and educational outlet that they inherently crave.

 

 

In this day and age when impersonal standardized testing and state standards emphasize uniformity over uniqueness and creativity, creating a common platform that nourishes student-teacher relationships is more crucial than ever before. And while all educators must adhere to these standards, there are ways to break out of the mold.

 

 

My way is to have my class create its own video game. Games have become a common platform for my students and me, bridging the gap between the formalities of the education system and the fun and excitement of learning.

 

 

 

Putting video games into a classroom is an unsettling topic for many parents, teachers, and administrators, given the violent or mindless and frivolous reputation of games in mainstream society. For many, the question is simply, "Why take something that is considered only a fun pastime in our society and integrate it into an educational setting?"

 

 

 

Yet why wouldn't the concept work? It's been successful with mediums such as documentary films so why not video games? Games are, after all, quickly becoming the number one industry in entertainment -- which leads me to the question, "Can video games become a successful part of our educational system?"

 

 

 

Our year-long classroom project is an entirely original, student-created video game currently titled Earthquake Terror: After Shock. It's an unofficial sequel to Peg Kehret's story "Earthquake Terror," in which the main characters Jonathan, Abby, and Moose are stranded on the fictional Magpie Island when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake strikes San Francisco. In the current version of After Shock, students must guide Jonathan through a ravaged Magpie Island in search of his sister Abby.

 

 

 

The game's development is divided into numerous aspects. We use RPG Maker XP for its simplicity. I want my students to focus on the creative and educational aspects of game development without being bogged down by complex programming routines.

 

 

The actual in-game work consists of a small group of two or three students working together on the game engine, planning and populating the virtual world. While those students are working on the game, other students also in small groups write scripts, draw artwork, design maps, and create music.

 

 

The project has several objectives that adhere to the educational guidelines that all teachers must follow, but my primary objective is to supplement everyday lessons in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies through video game development.

 

 

Ultimately, I want this game to be a culmination of everything the students have learned throughout the school year. For example, using the story "Earthquake Terror" as a base for the game's story allows me to integrate my social studies and earth science lessons into the actual plot of the game, which further enhances what my students have learned in class.

 

 

With this project I hope the students improve their reading, writing, analytical thinking, social studies, computer science, team building, multi-tasking, and problem-solving skills.

 

 

[ Giancarlos Alvarado ] 

 

 

Mon message est simple: Si vous êtes un enseignant dans une classe de lycée ou de college, et que cette idée vous intrigue, je suis prêt à en discuter pour évaluer comment elle peut être mise en oeuvre concrètement !!! ^_^

En quoi avez-vous changez d'idée cette année ?

C'est la question que Edge a posé à 164 "cerveau", chercheur de tout poil et de toute horizon. C'est une tradition du site, et les réponses sont parfois fascinantes !

 

 

JOSEPH LEDOUX: Like many scientists in the field of memory, I used to think that a memory is something stored in the brain and then accessed when used.

 

 

Then, in 2000, a researcher in my lab, Karim Nader, did an experiment that convinced me, and many others, that our usual way of thinking was wrong.

 

 

In a nutshell, what Karim showed was that each time a memory is used, it has to be restored as a new memory in order to be accessible later. The old memory is either not there or is inaccessible.

 

 

In short, your memory about something is only as good as your last memory about it. This is why people who witness crimes testify about what they read in the paper rather than what they witnessed.

 

 

CHARLES SEIFE: I used to think that a modern, democratic society had to be a scientific society. After all, the scientific revolution and the American Revolution were forged in the same flames of the enlightenment.

 

 

Naturally, I thought, a society that embraces the freedom of thought and expression of a democracy would also embrace science.

However, when I first started reporting on science, I quickly realized that science didn't spring up naturally in the fertile soil of the young American democracy.

 

 

Americans were extraordinary innovators — wonderful tinkerers and engineers — but you can count the great 19th century American physicists on one hand and have two fingers left over. The United States owes its scientific tradition to aristocratic Europe's universities (and to its refugees), not to any native drive.

In fact, science clashes with the democratic ideal. Though it is meritocratic, it is practiced in the elite and effete world of academe, leaving the vast majority of citizens unable to contribute to it in any meaningful way. Science is about freedom of thought, yet at the same time it imposes a tyranny of ideas.

DANIEL GILBERT: Six years ago, I changed my mind about the benefit of being able to change my mind.

In 2002, Jane Ebert and I discovered that people are generally happier with decisions when they can't undo them. When subjects in our experiments were able to undo their decisions they tended to consider both the positive and negative features of the decisions they had made, but when they couldn't undo their decisions they tended to concentrate on the good features and ignore the bad.

 

 

As such, they were more satisfied when they made irrevocable than revocable decisions. Ironically, subjects did not realize this would happen and strongly preferred to have the opportunity to change their minds.

Now up until this point I had always believed that love causes marriage. But these experiments suggested to me that marriage could also cause love. If you take data seriously you act on it, so when these results came in I went home and proposed to the woman I was living with.

 

 

She said yes, and it turned out that the data were right: I love my wife more than I loved my girlfriend.

NICHOLAS CARR: In January of 2007, China's president, Hu Jintao, gave a speech before a group of Communist Party officials. His subject was the Internet. "Strengthening network culture construction and management," he assured the assembled bureaucrats, "will help extend the battlefront of propaganda and ideological work. It is good for increasing the radiant power and infectiousness of socialist spiritual growth."

If I had read those words a few years earlier, they would have struck me as ludicrous. It seemed so obvious that the Internet stood in opposition to the kind of centralized power symbolized by China's regime. A vast array of autonomous nodes, not just decentralized but centerless, the Net was a technology of personal liberation, a force for freedom.

I now see that I was naive. Like many others, I mistakenly interpreted a technical structure as a metaphor for human liberty.

 

 

In recent years, we have seen clear signs that while the Net may be a decentralized communications system, its technical and commercial workings actually promote the centralization of power and control.

 

 

Look, for instance, at the growing concentration of web traffic. During the five years from 2002 through 2006, the number of Internet sites nearly doubled, yet the concentration of traffic at the ten most popular sites nonetheless grew substantially, from 31% to 40% of all page views, according to the research firm Compete.

 

LERA BORODITSKY: I used to think that languages and cultures shape the ways we think. I suspected they shaped they ways we reason and interpret information.  But I didn't think languages could shape the nuts and bolts of perception, the way we actually see the world.  That part of cognition seemed too low-level, too hard-wired, too constrained by the constants of physics and physiology to be affected by language.

 

Then studies started coming out claiming to find cross-linguistic differences in color memory.  For example, it was shown that if your language makes a distinction between blue and green (as in English), then you're less likely to confuse a blue color chip for a green one in memory.  In a study like this you would see a color chip, it would then be taken away, and then after a delay you would have to decide whether another color chip was identical to the one you saw or not.

 

 

[ Edge ] 

 

Et plein d'autres réponses encore plus fascinantes !!!

Haïr ce que l'on aime faire (et vice versa)

Une idée qui est vraiment cruciale: le fait que l'on finisse par ne plus aimer ce que l'on fait. C'est malheureusement un sort très courant quand on produit quelque chose dans lequel on s'est investi... ^_^

 

 

 

Here’s the problem: I’ve noticed it’s really hard to create a subjectively judged project like a game or music or whatever of high quality if I actually care about it. If I don’t care at all, it’s really easy. What a cruel joke. The inverse relationship looks about like this scientific chart.

 

We always hear about those art guys - when they “can’t see their painting anymore”, they look at it in a mirror to see it again with a fresh perspective. Or whatever. When I write music and I get so sucked into it I “can’t hear it anymore”, I transpose the entire composition up or down by a half step or so to hear it again with a fresh perspective. So that’s nice, but WHAT CAN WE DO FOR GAMES AND GAMEPLAY? What small easy thing can I change to totally change but not change the game so I can play it again for the first time with a fresh perspective? 

 

[ 2D Boy ] 

The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas

J’avais beaucoup aimé « Freakonomics ». « The Economic Naturalist » s’inscrit plus ou moins dans la même veine, prendre des thèmes parfaitement compréhensibles pour toucher du doigt des vérités économiques…

 

 

Why do drive-up ATM machines have Braille dots on the keypads? Why does it cost more to fly round-trip from Kansas City to Orlando than from Orlando to Kansas City? Why are people more likely to return cash to a store when given too much change than to return merchandise for which they were not charged? Why do fast food chains promise a free meal if the cashier doesn't offer a receipt, even though most customers don't want one?

 

You can imagine how such common-sense questions could form the starting points for just the kind of writing about business and economics that curious readers now crave. And sometimes, Frank's one- or two-page answers deliver on that promise.

 

Patriotisme économique, mythologique et religieux ?

Voila un terme qui a fait couler beaucoup d’encre.  Une simple recherche dans google montre plus d’un demi million de référence. En France, c’est une notion un peu caduque, si tant est que l’état a parti pris de près ou de loin dans a peut prêt toutes les plus grosses sociétés du pays.

 

Aux Etats-Unis, la saveur de ce patriotisme prend des formes très différentes. Le dernier exemple en date nous vient de Microsoft.

 

Microsoft édite une version collector Halo 3 du Zune, son IPod killer. A cela, rien d’anormal. Halo est une grosse IP pour Microsoft, le public qui joue à Halo aime plutôt bien la musique, et le Zune a bien besoin d’un peu de soutien face aux machines de Steve Jobs. Coffret noir, symbolique reprenant l’univers de Halo…

 

Jusque la, rien de très surprenant.

 

Non, ce qui est plus surprenant, c’est la seconde version collector, en coffret marron, et a prix cassé. Cette version a ceci de particulier qu’elle est réservée et uniquement réservée aux soldats américains et a leurs familles.

 

 

Il y a là un sacre clash de symbole. Une entreprise privée, qui plus est d’envergure internationale, dédie un de ces produits à une armée. Le dit produit lui-même s’inspire d’un jeu à forte connotation guerrière, mais hautement édulcoré. Ca pousse a réfléchir…

 

Peut être que les soldats américains se rêvent en « Master Chief » ?

 

Pendant ce temps, une association religieuse veut envoyer un coffret aux soldats contenant entre autre une bible (pourquoi pas), mais surtout une copie du jeu Left Behind (voir post précédant)…

 

Hummm…

Open Source Movies! Open Source Games ?

"A Swarm Of Angel" est un projet de film entièrement financé par la souscription. Chaque souscripteur verse 25$, et dispose ainsi d'une voix dans le projet, et peut même y participer si il le souhaite. Mieux, le film sera ensuite distribué libre de droits, en Creative Commons.

 

Conceived of by digital filmmaker, Matt Hanson, A Swarm of Angels is a revolutionary, futuristic film project, the aim of which is to create a £1 million film that will be distributed to over one million people using the Internet and a global community of members. The film will not be protected by any DRM, will be freely shareable, and will not be created for profit -- all proceeds will go towards the next free community production.

 

What's noteworthy about Hanson's endeavor is that not only is the film to be freely distributed, but also its creation necessitates a high amount of interactivity and community involvement.

 

People interested in becoming members pay a fee of £25, which allows them to influence production and development by having a say in creative decisions. They can even contribute more directly by joining the crew if they have the talent.

 

[ Fast Company ] 

 

Pour faire vivre un tel projet, il faut bien sur avoir la caution culturel que seul le cinéma dispose à l'heure actuel. J'aimerai bien voir un tel concept mis en oeuvre dans le jeu. Seriez-vous prêt à payer un jeu par avance ?

 

Microsoft Surface

Evidemment, tous le monde en parle, alors difficile de passer a cote. Pour les retardataires, Microsoft a devoile son premier projet de table interactive. ^_^

 

Ces nouveaux objets sont bien sur tres attirant, meme si ce n'est pas demain la veille qu'on les aura chez nous...

 

Over the years we've seen plenty of surface and gestural interface computing systems and prototypes, but nothing mass-market -- nothing consumable, if you will.

 

Microsoft aims to change all that with Surface, its first foray into surface / gestural interfaces; arriving in the form of a 30-inch table-like display, Microsoft envisions its eventual uses as pervasive as imaginable, like ordering beverages from your restaurant table and silently scanning your wine bottle's RFID tag to automagically present information on the vineyard and vintage.

 

Sure, some of it's pretty pie in the sky, but Microsoft is touting Surface's multi-touch, multi-user interface, object recognition and gestural interaction, and it's out to dispel myths of vaporware with limited 2007 rollouts in T-Mobile stores, Starwood hotels, and even Harrah's in Vegas.

 

[ Engadget ] 

 

Media In Transition 5...

La conférence Media In Transition a touché à sa fin il y a quelques jours de cela. Parmi les sujets, un nombre plutôt conséquent portait sur les jeux vidéo, par exemple :

 

Wanna Headbang in San Andreas?: Gaming and Music Industry Negotiations in the 1990s, Ben Aslinger

…Why did publishers such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Konami develop interests in music licensing?  I argue efforts to include popular music reflect industrial desires to articulate discourses of game "quality" and to target new demographics….

 

Authorship in Interactive Media:  Collaboration, Interaction, and User-Generated Content in the Games Industry, Alec Austin

…Where is authorship located in a computer game?  The easy answer would be to attribute authorship to a single, visionary auteur or to the team of artists, designers, and programmers that took part in its creation, but player choice is also significant in shaping the player’s experience of the game. In addition, the spread of tools that allow end users to modify existing game content further blurs the line between audiences and content producers...

 

Virtual Ownership, Brent C.J. Britton

…What forms of intellectual property protection are useful or viable in wholly virtual worlds such as Second Life?  Should virtual worlds attempt to emulate real-world forms of IP?  Do the same theories of ownership apply?...