You're sitting at your desk in school. There's a
teacher droning on at the front, writing things down on a whiteboard. You're
half paying attention as you copy down, word for word, all the things being
written. At the same time, you're doodling in the margins. Perhaps you're even
thinking about what's for lunch. Or that text message you received before
class. Or how much you want to be playing video games or reading the internet. Perhaps
you're even doing homework due for the next class. Or maybe you're obliviously
daydreaming. Or literally asleep.
That was me in school, and I wouldn't be surprised if
you've experienced the same, especially if you grew up with the Internet in
your pocket (I did not).
It's getting increasingly difficult to get kids to pay
attention in class, and the problem isn't teachers. The problem is the
education system itself. It's a dying technology.
You can only go so far to punish a kid before you have to
give up and realize that a teacher talking and writing on a whiteboard is
simply not interesting enough anymore, not in the Internet Age. Not when
there's YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Netflix, and a huge variety of
games on different platforms. Kids are devouring information at a rate much
faster than our predecessors—because of the Internet.
How is school, or even college, going to compete with this
massive sensory and information overload?
The answer is both simple and complex: education needs to
become a form of game design.
Currently, most games are for-profit endeavors designed to
be fun and interesting—but not very educational. This will soon change, as long
as we as a society realize just how crucial this problem is and begin to adopt
radical changes to our schools and curricula.
Now, take yourself out of the ordinary school classroom.
Imagine instead that as soon as you enter a school, you can walk
towards any classroom you want. Each one is completely unique, designed
specifically for a certain type of person. Most of the classrooms have
computers in them. One of them might have high ceilings, large windows, and
beanbag chairs. While another one might be dimly lit with lots of quiet, isolated
cubicles. Still another may be on the roof or in an indoor garden. Or if you
really want, you can take a laptop into the cafeteria itself, for easy snack acquisition.
You choose your own learning environment. And when you sit
down, you awaken a computer screen.
On it is a list of games available for you to play. Each
game indicates what level you have reached in it. The games all teach you
something different and valuable. The subjects can range greatly: from how to
do a simple math calculation to how to design an electrical circuit. You have
complete control over which games to play and how much time to spend on each.
You can try as many or as few as you like.
For the dabblers, there is an infinite array of choices. For
the delvers, each game can contain a large number of levels inside.
Need help on a game? Each game will contain forums of
knowledge—a combination of message boards and articles to help guide you but
not give away answers too readily. Alternatively, you can consult your fellow
students via chat or video.
Each game will let you know exactly who in the school is the
"current best" at the game—there will be rankings for each. Of
course, if you're not at all interested in rankings, you don't have to look at
them. In fact, you can tell each game whether to post your ranking or not—in case
you don't want that information to be publicized. However, a certain level of
competition will spur students into getting increasingly better at the games
they're most interested in / adept at playing.
There will be games that require cooperation within a multiplayer environment. You'll be tasked with a problem that can only be solved by forming teams. Other games will foster creativity, allowing you to compose a piece of music, art, or literature. There will be games that take on the form of interactive encyclopedias or "games of discovery"—perhaps starting with nothing more than a search box or a single button. Still other games will train a skill, such as cooking or piloting a plane.
It's that kind of variety and incentive that will make students
actively want to participate, learn, and attend this type of school.
So why aren't we here yet?
The problem is that the educational games available haven't
gotten to the point where they can completely replace our current system of
lectures. Many such games exist, and more of them are being developed by the
day. But to reach a saturation point, more people need to become better game
designers.
It's obvious now that yesterday's educational system is
inadequate for teaching future generations.
First of all, it's traditional to group kids by age, but
this is an archaic leftover from the Industrial Era, as children were shuttled
through an assembly line. The assembly line was an incredibly important
innovation at that time, but today,
it's nothing remarkable. And when applied to children, it seems downright
stupid. Why should an eight-year-old be necessarily at a higher level of
education than a seven-year-old? Each student should learn at their own pace.
Second of all, textbooks evolve at an incredibly slow rate. They're also expensive and often boring to
read. They're completely non-interactive, aside from sometimes having problems
for you to try to solve, with the answers located in the back.
If you're trying to learn to solve math problems, for
instance, you ideally want the moment between trying and succeeding or failing to be instantaneous. That
immediate feedback is an important mechanism in developing strong, ingrained
technique. If you're trying to learn through a textbook, you're going to end up
wasting time flipping to the back for the answer. Those moments are too
valuable in the learning process to be wasted. Our brains process information
much better with faster feedback.
Third of all, teachers should not be lecturers. A lecturer
is often just a glorified textbook. Sure, some teachers are really good at presenting information in
an entertaining and engaging way. However this is not remotely the case for all
teachers. By converting the learning experience into a game, you can reach a
level of interaction not previously possible with just a teacher.
Teachers are not out of the picture however. If a child
wants to learn in an environment with one, they should be able to. But the teacher
will not be tasked with lecturing students. The role of a teacher (or mentor,
as I'd rather think of them) should be to answer any questions a student may
have about the games and even about their own progress and personality.
A truly great mentor should be able to recognize a student's
weaknesses and strengths just by conversing with them and watching them learn.
This is the kind of a thing a game will not be able to teach you. Having a
real, deep human connection with someone is essential to the learning process.
A mentor will be there for you and share emotional moments with you that can
lead to all sorts of self-discoveries. They'll be joyous when you succeed at
something for the first time and encouraging when you are feeling down on
yourself. Talking to a mentor should be therapeutic, stress-relieving, and enlightening.
There may also be a set of mentors who work primarily from
home. Experts in their fields, they will be open to chat with any student who
wants to learn more by opening a window with them. This allows all the students
to have access to mentors who are in the top of their field.
What are some ways we can get to this point?
Many things are happening to lead us here. However I have
one crucial suggestion: Teach all children (and possibly all adults) a useful programming
language.
The English language is great for communicating with one
another and recording knowledge, but a programming
language allows you to communicate in ways hitherto impossible with just
English. By programming, you can create your own games as much as you like and
share them with other people. You can, in fact, communicate with games. Creating games is becoming a
new form of communication.
As more people gain the basic tool for creating games (a
programming language), the more games will be available in the public sphere,
and the better we will be able to isolate the most effective games for each
subject. As each child grows up and learns, they will be able to pass on their
knowledge in the form of games for future generations—in other words, they will
create and gain their own students, forming their own unique legacy.
That is the next step of human society.
The human brain is incredible at recognizing patterns. However,
to grasp the patterns, you must repeat the same set of experiences over and
over again. In the past, this process has been slow and tedious. But with
games, they can be properly tuned and sped up, to the point that the learning
process will take drastically less time.
Part of what competitive gamers do is train themselves to
recognize certain patterns with greater accuracy and greater speed. Right now,
competitive games don't teach you much useful information. But once more games
become educational, kids will become much faster and better at learning things
than we ever were.
That's the future of learning, and it is fast approaching.
