So one career path that I would like to follow is that of a video game designer who creates games to help educate children (or even adults). While I thought this idea was original...what I am learning is that it has been around for a very long time. Do you remember Math Blasters? That is most likely the reason I am so good at arithmetic, because I played that game for hours on end.
I believe that using games as a way to help educate students is a positive and promising direction that we can move towards fairly easily. Without passion kids (and even adults) tend to lose interest in material that might not interest them. Once they can get an interest of their own, then educators can move out of the way and let them explore on their own, but until then there is a burden on the instructors to capture their attention. Games can help!
Recently the former CEO of EA Games said he was leaving EA's focus on video games to spend more time working with educational games (which might be a huge breakthrough). EA, in addition to many other partners have grouped with the Institute of Play to form something called the Glass Lab.
Here is a link:
http://www.instituteofplay.org/work/projects/glasslab/
Here is a video example of what they do:
http://vimeo.com/77705483
What does this mean in the realm of Graphic Design? Well, these games and tools are being created, designed, by people and the more this field takes off the more people will be needed to help complete these projects. Currently the technology at our feet is allowing for better and better graphics to work in a real time rendering (meaning playing the game as the field of view is rendering), which means in the not-so-distant future we will have the ability to great high-resolution graphics easily and on a cheap budget. This means that educational games can evolve from the simplistic nature of Math Blasters to a fully detailed environment with complex graphics and animations.
MATH BLASTERS! Heck to the heck yeah (censorship, for the win). I'm pretty stoked to hear that the former CEO of EA Games has set his sights on education. I am right there with you with a game-filled childhood of stimulating academics. Math Blasters, Type to Learn (yeah, I actually thought that was fun), and a plethora of other games for arithmetic, spelling and grammar, science... y'know. I'll totally trick my kids into learning through games. Just checked out Glass Lab's site and saw they currently have a trial version of an educational game -- "SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge." Sounds promising already :)
ReplyDeleteThat's a really awesome idea! I mean, sure there are already games out there that help kids learn, but not many with great graphics and especially with the newer generations I think that's something to really work on. Not only that, but for subjects that are really boring to kids games can really help stimulate interest while allowing them to learn the subject in a fun and educational way. I like how they were experimenting that on the video with the SimCity.edu game. Like the teacher said, the engagement of the students really skyrocketed, and if that's successful, why not invest in it? I know I wish they had incorporated games (although back then they wouldn't be all techno or had any amazing graphics) into most of my studies, because I reeeeallly hated science and math (still do!) yet I feel that even teenagers/college students/adults would see benefit in it. Anyway, great blog topic Phillip! :)
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