Playing and Learning (Was Education and Entertainment)

[Eads, David A.]

This is a little bit of a tangent....

The surface of a discussion on education and entertainment has been
scratched.  I'm a young person (20 years old) with intellectual inclinations
who grew up playing video games.  Before BBSes and the Internet, video games
and creative tools were the only thing I used my computer for.  I've talked
to lots of my friends and they all seem to agree:  My generation learned how
to use computers by using games.  And, video gaming contributed to my
intellectual development.  It really makes sense that what is thought of as
entertainment encourages good computing and can even stimulate thought.  It
has to be carefully done, but the unheralded national obsession with the
Sims, the number one game in the US since its release February, shows that
"brain games" have popular potential.

As a sidenote, I'm delving into gaming as opposed to "entertainment" because
this is where I think there is a fundamental difference.  Entertainment
seems to symbolize one way technologies:  Entertainment uses of technology
are things like TV and movies, downloading MP3s, and other kinds of push
technologies.  Education, at a fundamental level means problem solving, and
problem solving and play are inextricably linked.  In fact, it may be
inherent in humanity's evolutionary history to enjoy play and problem
solving:  We're big, clumsy bipeds who seem to have lost our body hair
(well, maybe not me - ha ha!) whose primary survival mechanism is our
mobility, adaptability, and ability to approach problems cleverly - we can't
do much without our big brains.  Our big brains make survival activities
feel kinda good (sex and food and accomplishment spring to mind).

Problem solving for human beings can be an inherently fun and playful and
creative process, though there's a lot of other psychology involved.  That's
a fundamental thing to remember in approaching using technology (or your
hands, or a book you're reading, or a lego set, or the latest Jay-Z album)
when teaching.

The nice thing is that along the way, good video games like SimCity, the
Sims, Civilization, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Myst even Star Craft and
Half Life, teach another important cognitive skill, again related to play.
When you approach these games, there's an element of experimentation.  You
try stuff, get feedback from the game world, and try more stuff.  Games are
predictable (dangerous but useful), so usually feedback is going to be the
same for the same action in the same context, though complexity can mount
quickly.  This ability to play without breaking anything is critical.  It's
okay to die, have your city go belly up, lose your continent to the bubonic
plague, have your family turn dysfunctional in a game.  That's the approach
we take to using a computer.  Wreck an OS, crash a system?  Who cares - you
can fix it.  And that's the approach that the New Economy takes to business.
If 4 of your startups go belly up, one does well, and one makes you a
millionaire that is exactly just fine.  The 4 that flopped are cool, baby,
no worries.

Whoops, this is getting unfocused.  But, the point here is that the
technology doesn't teach with explicitly educational materials, it teaches
in the ways the people naturally learn and teaches them how to learn better.
That doesn't happen, of course, if the technology isn't leveraged and isn't
encouraged.

David