PB: When I think about games as being compelling learning environments, what comes to mind is how visually beautiful they are, such elaborate images! But more importantly, they spawn active engagement, e.g., doing something, seeing immediate results, making revisions and if that doesn’t work, trying something new. This process is just like a scientist, the willingness to try again and again, moving toward a goal, making progress, working as fast as you can , e.g., rapid engagement, rapid feedback and doing more and more to do better.

	Games spawn active engagement, e.g., doing something, seeing immediate results, making revisions and if that doesn’t work, trying something new.

Emotion plays a role in the desire to play games. Children experience joy when they succeed at what they are doing. In games, efforts move toward the positive, toward success. We see the excitement, the responses, that allows players to encode learning as a positive event. Not only do players feel good themselves, but they retain what they are learning. If emotions are attached to an event then we remember it. In school, when students are memorizing something to get something done, the mood is just flat. The typical classroom doesn’t have much joy, but instead student performance is aimed at the avoidance of failure.

If we look at experimental psychology, the psychology of learning, we see that game developers are tapping into all those parameters that affect learning. Games present a situation or task at a level the learner can handle; the learner makes a rapid response and gets rapid feedback. The learner responds, repeats, gets informative feedback, revises and builds her/his repertoire. These factors are straight out of applied behaviorist theory. Game designers have capitalized on it.

Young players live in an instant feedback kind of world. My younger students are always instant messaging, to the point where messages appear on my screen while I am teaching. They are using IM as a way of expanding the community beyond the confines of the classroom, under the teacher’s

simSchool: What do you see as some of the benefits of playing games?

PB: Unlike the classroom environment, games allow “private learning.” Instead of a group of 30 classmates and a teacher “evaluating what you do”, it is you against the game. As a private learner, you probably take more risks. It is important to take risks if you are to grow. Yet, children become very risk adverse as they go through school. Teachers today, too, have become very risk adverse. If you loose your dignity in front of classmates and teachers, you pull back and get more protective. To grow we have to take the information from our successes AND our failures. Games allow you to hone risk taking. You improve what you do little by little, a sort of titration. You are taking small steps and if you are not successful you don’t have to step all the way back. You get closer and closer to the goal. The risk that you take is a calculated one, not a wild one. Taking risks is the only way we are going to get to innovation. We need to encourage people to move forward and to think outside the box. When something you try doesn’t work, try something else, e.g., calculated and successive growth. Games allow you to do this in a safe environment.

Our educational system has not tapped into the motivation of our young people. In classrooms where there are 25 students, one teacher cannot provide enough feedback. Teachers are judged unfairly. No human being could respond to so many students. If a student asks a teacher a question, they may answer but if the student doesn’t understand, s/he doesn’t ask again. With a simulation, a player can keep asking over and over again, moving toward excellence. In playing a game, my daughter received immediate, individualized feedback and practice.

simSchool: How do you think we can get the message to faculty and teachers? How do we bridge where education is today to where it could be tomorrow with simulations/games?

PB: We do see change happening outside of education. A good indicator is the multi-billion dollar game industry which is doing very well. Because we have compulsory education,