simSchool: What is it about simulations and games that make them compelling learning environments?

IHC: Not all simulations and games are good. But let’s turn this question on its head and look at games and simulations as learning environments. It takes a lot of learning to master any video game or simulation. Kids ARE learning from playing games. They get deeply involved with computer games and show an exceptional degree of sophistication in their ways of thinking and talking about playing the games. The fact is that games are compelling environments and learning is happening! This should call our attention to games. We cannot be “Cyber-Ostriches” as Papert calls those who ignore these incredible phenomena. We cannot say “this is wrong and I don’t care!”

Kids spend long hours in school, yet, many schools are out of step with kids’ culture. Most are structured environments where kids have little control over what and how they learn. Schools should be fun, compelling, and places where kids fall in love with learning as they do through playing games. This leads to the question of what is it that makes games and simulations learning environments? They give us the ability to become something as a way of building knowledge about it. For example you can imagine playing a game where the player becomes the particle or the fraction in that space so that the player literally learns how things move and transform. This can be a powerful way to learn mathematical and physical ideas.

The other side of the experience is to have kids create their own simulations and games. Children's enthusiasm for playing games easily gives rise to an enthusiasm for making them, and this in turn leads to more sophisticated thinking about all aspects of games. Yasmin Kafai who was my student at MIT, now a professor at UCLA, found that in building a game kids think about the challenges, the decisions, the psychologies, along with articulating their thinking and understanding about particular subjects and about the game’s users. This is constructionist learning a la Papert: The learner is engaged in the construction of something external or at least shareable [such as a game]. This leads us to a model using a cycle of internalization of what is outside, then externalization of what is inside and so on.

simSchool: You are the founder of the engaging website for young people called MaMaMedia. Can you tell us how this site embodies constructionist learning?

IHC: MaMaMedia.com is a playful and creative environment on the Internet. We articulated what constructionist learning is all about in simpler and more commercial terms. We emphasized over and again that the most important skills for the new millennium are "the three Xs:" eXploring, eXpressing and eXchanging ideas by using the new digital media.

The first X, eXploring, takes advantage of kids' natural passion for learning and discovery. When a child discovers for herself rather than being told is when learning resonates. Games and simulations are an ideal learning environment for discovery.

	As educators we should play and assess the learning that goes on in games and see them as real world laboratories for new ideas.

The second, eXpressing, is learning how to use a vast palette of tools to become designers, builders and architects of our own ideas. Kids use digital media to become versatile and effective communicators of ideas. The third X, eXchanging, is the sharing of ideas with others. It is my belief that real learning only occurs in a social context, in an environment where you can exchange ideas, ask questions and work with peers and experts. Moreover, through eXchanging, kids become active participants in their learning, not passive absorbers of information.

The MaMaMedia website is not just about information and search. It is about giving children media and fun tools, activities and games, so they can create their own media and share it with other players. It is a large application with many activities that interconnect and interrelate inside it. ...to be contiuned in the next edition of simZine Next Page: INNOVATE Webcast