Broadening awareness of Educational simulations and games

Here is a snippet from the interview in which David describes simSchool:
“simSchool provides teacher practitioners and preservice teachers with an opportunity to practice instruction based on understanding students’ personalities and learning styles. The idea is that there should be a flight simulator-like game for teachers to experiment with the processes of teaching and see the impact they have in classroom. The two most important pieces that we are building into the simulator are addressing How do you learn to be a teacher? How do you do the processes of planning, thinking and seeing what students are like before they enter the classroom by reading student records, understanding some things about their personalities, their capabilities and their learning styles; and How do you use the information about individual students to plan lessons and activities that address as many of the students learning needs as can be addressed at one time.

	The idea is that there should be a flight simulator-like game for teachers to experiment with the processes of teaching and the impacts they have in classroom.

In doing projects and authentic learning, “How can you creatively group students so that individually they all have a chance to learn and grow together?”

The way simSchool will work is that there will be a database of about 600-1000 realistic student profiles. Each will have personality factors, emotional factors, academic development factors and learning preferences that will operate as a hidden set of variables when the teachers try out their ideas in the observable arena. For example, say, today we are going to watch a movie and discuss it. How many kids will that fit and for how long? We would like student teachers, new teachers, and even experienced teachers to reflect on their teaching to see their work in a new light.