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《Pokemon Go》能够带给教育系统怎样的帮助

发布时间:2016-08-05 14:39:47 Tags:,,,,

作者:John Krajewski

关于《Pokemon Go》风潮最让人印象深刻的便是速度吧;即在短短一周内这款游戏的使用率便超越了Twitter。这其实是全世界都都准备好迎接的一个理念,并且它是以一种能够轻易触及的方式出现在我们面前。

说到接受度,我们已经拥有一个能够增强我们现实生活的电子世界;我们已经在“增强”交通系统中召唤了一些能帮助我们开车的“人”,社交媒体也能够增强我们与其他人的交流方式,同时年轻人也会通过“增强的”游戏化社交应用(如Tinder)去交朋友。而《Pokemon Go》的出现在我们所生活的世界中增添了一种奇妙感,这也是许多人都非常欢迎的内容。这其实是基于一般扩增概念,即将虚拟世界与现实世界连接在一起并提供给我们的社会巨大的潜能。而事实上,如今我们的大部分生活已经因为不断发展的技术而以某种形式获得了增强。

但奇怪的是在教育领域却并非如此。教育是现代生活中为数不多缺少数字连接的领域,但其实它却可以从中获取巨大利益。在很多情况下,一些机构会因为安全性等相关问题会去阻碍数字访问,并因此而错失了我们在生活中的其它领域所享受到的好处。如果要想真正让教育跟上现代发展脚步,它就必须做出改变。

教室:游戏设计师的梦想之地

在教室中游戏并不是什么新鲜事物了,小学的时候我便一直在教室里玩游戏。尽管教育具有漫长的发展史,但是游戏在学校中的角色却未曾发生多大改变。游戏最常出现的地方只有计算机实验室:

通常情况下这其实是一种个体体验,即学生们坐在教室里并独自使用计算机或平板电脑。

这也是一种一次性体验,即学生们只会玩15至30分钟的游戏。

老师坐在旁边并充当着技术支持的角色。

这就好像在辛苦的课业结束后的奖励或休息。

classroom(from gamasutra)

classroom(from gamasutra)

而如此去利用教室空间其实是让人遗憾的,因为没有比教室环境更丰富且更有趣的空间能够去设计一款游戏了。这里可谓是游戏设计师的梦想之地:

你拥有一群朋友在玩游戏,并且在这里你们都彼此相识。

他们在每个上学日都会聚集在一起。

这里有个资深的向导能够帮助他们取的成功,并且他们每天都能进行几个小时的互动。

他们能够访问同样水平的硬件,拥有同样的网络连接以及相似的时间表去一起游戏。

创造一款具有病毒性且能够传播到玩家朋友间的游戏便是许多娱乐游戏的目标。而在教室中你便能够做到这点。这里拥有一个待增强的环境。我们本可以更好地将这一环境与现代技术维系在一起,而游戏则能够帮助我们做到这点。

虚拟领域之旅

为了真正利用教室环境的独特性和丰富性,我们需要创造虚拟领域之旅。这些体验和游戏需要去扩展教室,伴随着教室长期运行下去,并创造对所有学生的学习有帮助的环境。与《Pokemon》提供给玩家围绕着现实世界的环境同样的方法,即将玩家每日互动和旅程变得更神奇且增添他们与其他玩家间的互动,虚拟世界也能够渗透到教室中,即增添更多环境和意义到学生的学习中,并将其整合到他们更大的生活中且呈现出关联性。

如今的教育过于关注教授学生们“如何做”,甚至是以“为什么”为牺牲代价。而在信息时代这一方法所存在的问题便是,我们其实可以通过谷歌搜索快速获得所有相关资源。任何人都可以免费获得自己想要知道的东西。所以学校存在的主要目标不应该是将事实添加到学生们的脑子里(游戏邦注:如今的事实已经是普遍存在的一些内容了),而是要提供给他们“为什么”去帮助他们发现这些问题的内在美,如此他们才能逐渐去开启自己的世界。

而电子游戏竟然能够自动做到这点!你永远不需要鼓励一个小孩去玩游戏(你需要做的应该是命令他们停止游戏)。但是在家庭作业面前却恰恰相反。家庭作业必须足够困难才有帮助吗?是否沉闷的内容才是有价值的?尽管去做那些自己并不想做的无聊的事也是一种有用的技能,但是对于现在这个时代更有帮助的应该是那些自己和别人生活中真正有意义的事,而我们其实可以通过将游戏的自我推动本质整合到教育中去做到这点。此外,那些不认为我们在学校中所学到的东西可以做得和电子游戏一样有趣的人其实并未看到这些东西真正的价值。

通过虚拟世界去增强教室的方法能够以和玩家有关的形式去呈现给他们“为什么”,从而进一步赋予他们在教室中所学到的一切内容更多意义,并能够发扬他们彼此间的合作精神与领导能力。此外,体验类型也能够进一步拓展教室的局限性并尽可能地将所有学科和领域整合在一起。

我们的方法

我们现在所从事的项目Eco便旨在实现这一目标:在Eco中,教室里的学生将被整合在一起,他们将在30天内共享一个虚拟世界。他们在这个世界中所做的一切事情都可以影响到模拟生态系统(即该系统可能被污染或被损坏)。而为了获得成功玩家必须以一个群组的身份去做出决策,即基于来自游戏中的模拟数据去做出最有帮助的决定。

eco(from gamasutra)

eco(from gamasutra)

Eco是与教室共存的,即持续不断地运行着并未学生们在不同领域(包括:生态学,统计学,公民学,领导能力)的学习提供环境。它利用了学生们在教室中的聚集而创造了会议让学生们有机会去讨论他们在共享世界中该采取怎样的行动。它会将学生们的体验分享给老师并呈现出玩家所面对的所有挑战的聚合视图,以此创造出能够用于其它学科中的动态课程与讨论。这不仅能够让老师作为游戏向导,同时也能够保留学生们自己的体验。

通过这种全班同学都能参与其中的持续的虚拟领域之旅,我们希望能够提供给多个相联系的学科一个有意义的社交环境,并通过创造丰富且相互联系的体验去增强学生们的学校生活。

提供风险

我们经常在说电子游戏能够提供给玩家一个安全的探索领域,在这里失败不仅是可接受的同时也是一个学习过程。毫无疑问这也是教育类游戏的重要功能,但是我们却很少提及同样也是可行的对立面:电子游戏也能够提供给玩家有意义的风险,即他们所关心并与其他玩家共同承担责任的一个扩增世界。当这一世界是由你的决策所掌控并且可能遭遇破坏时,你便会迫切去寻找自己能够获胜的信息。即学生们的虚拟世界的命运是取决于他们对于生态学,统计学的掌握或者对于合作技能和领导技能的学习。电子游戏进程会让玩家们去拯救世界,但当这个世界可能遭受破坏时,玩家群组就必须去共同承担这一责任。

此外,通过增强教室中的社交世界,你便能够感受到学生间的社交互动的重要性。其实学生们学习数学和统计学的能力通常对于他们在学校中以及在玩家所关心的游戏世界中的社交互动并没有多大帮助,相反地这些能力将使得他们能够成为对整个群组具有贡献作用的人。我们并不能去低估如今学生在扩增世界中的投入;他们的生活和社交与他们难以分离的技术是紧密环绕着的。而现在的教育也能够使用同样的魔法去造福于学生们的学习过程。

而为了实现这一目标,我们就需要克服对网络社交的担忧。虽然这还是一条很漫长的道路,但毕竟教育是非常关键的一个领域。担心孩子是可理解的,但如果我们能够真正了解其中的利害关系,并明白这都是可以解决的问题,我们便清楚该如何选择了。

机遇

作为游戏设计师的我们拥有巨大的机遇和责任将电子游戏中的发展带进教育中。教育世界仍然是发展缓慢的世界,所以增强一个符合信息时代发展的教育系统是一个刻不容缓的任务。

我坚信这一任务将会落到游戏设计师手上,毕竟他们创造了无害的娱乐方式并将这门艺术整合到了强大的工具中,所以他们也可以将其带到教育的改革中:去激发学生们的灵感,培养他们将自己引向成功与幸福,并最终将我们的世界带向我们所向往的桃花源。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Augmenting the Classroom: What Education Needs to Learn from Pokemon Go

by John Krajewski

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Pokemon Go phenomenon is its speed; in a week, it was used more than Twitter. It was an idea the world was ready for, packaged in a form that was easily approachable.

It speaks to the acceptance we already have of the digital world that augments our lives; we’re already summoning people to drive us around from the ‘augmented’ transportation system, social media ‘augments’ how we communicate and engage with other people, and dating among young people happens primarily through the ‘augmented’, gamified social landscape of apps like Tinder. Pokemon Go’s arrival, suddenly adding a sense of wonder and magic to the everyday world around us, was a welcome addition to the lives of so many, clicking instantly with players on a massive scale. It is this general concept of augmentation (beyond overlaid maps and video), connecting the virtual world and the real world, that holds the potential for huge benefits to society. Most of our life, in fact, is already augmented in some fashion by technology that persists around it, alongside it, shaping it and being shaped by it in an increasingly important and useful augmented space.

Oddly enough, the same can’t be said of education. Education is one of the few facets of modern life that has very little digital connection, and yet could potentially benefit the most from it. In many cases, institutions explicitly block digital access out of safety or relevance concerns, missing the potential for providing the huge benefits we already receive in the rest of our lives. In order for education to advance into the modern age, this must change.

Classrooms: The Game Designer’s Dream Space

Games in the classroom are not new, I grew up playing them in elementary school (Oregon Trail forever!). Despite their long history in education, the roles of games in school has not changed much. The classic case for their use is the computer lab:

Generally a solitary experience, with students sitting down and using a computer or tablet alone.

One-off experiences, where students play a 15 to 30 minute game.

The teacher sits off to the side, acting primarily as tech support.

It resembles recess, a kind of reward and break from the ‘real work’ of school.

Such a use of the classroom space is unfortunate, because there is essentially no richer and more interesting space to design a game for than the classroom environment. It’s a game designer’s dream space:

You have an instant group of friends playing the game, where everyone knows each other.

They physically gather and meet every weekday.

There’s an experienced guide invested in their success whom they interact with several hours per day.

They all have access to the same level of hardware, internet connectivity, and similar schedules to play together.

Trying to make a game go viral and spread to a player’s friends is the goal of so many entertainment games. With games in the classroom you start with that state. There’s such a rich environment to augment here and connect to technology, and yet none of these properties are used, sticking instead to the barest of bite-sized activities. We can do a lot better, and games are what must lead the approach.

Moving Towards Virtual Field-Trips

For technology to truly take advantage of the unique and rich environment of the classroom, we need to build virtual field-trips. These experiences and games need to augment the classroom, running alongside it for long periods of time, creating a context in which everything students learn has value. In the same way that Pokemon provides a context to the world around you, making daily interactions and trips suddenly magical and filled with social connections to others, so can a virtual world augment a classroom, adding context and meaning to the concepts that students are learning, merging it into their larger lives and giving it relevance and connection.

Education is currently very focused on teaching students the ‘how’, even at the expense of them grasping the ‘why’. The problem with this approach in the information age is that the ‘how’ is instantly obtainable, with world-class resources a google-search away for literally any topic. Anyone who cares enough can teach themselves anything they want, for free. The primary goal of schools should then not be inserting facts into students’ heads (facts are already ubiquitous), but providing that ‘why’, helping them discover the innate beauty of these topics such that they are open to it in the world around them.

The amazing thing about video games is that they automatically do this; you never have to make a kid play a game (you might have to make them stop playing a game). The same thing, of course, cannot be said about homework. Is this necessary, must homework be a slog for it to be useful? Is tedium the value? While the ability to do boring things you don’t want to do may be a useful skill, far more useful in our current age is engaging with something that has meaning in your life and others, and education can be significantly improved upon by bringing the self-driven nature of games into education. Furthermore, those who don’t think the subject matter learned in school can be made as engaging as video games haven’t seen the true value of that subject matter.

A classroom augmented by a virtual world provides that ‘why’ in a form that is relevant to players, adding meaning to everything they’re learning in the classroom, inspiring collaboration and leadership between peers, and showing in an intrinsically compelling way ‘why they should care’. What’s more, the possibilities for types of experiences that can extend the classroom are limitless, crossing and connecting all subjects and fields.

Our Approach

Our current project Eco aims to achieve this: In Eco, a classroom of students builds a civilization together, in a shared virtual world that runs continuously for 30 real days. Everything they do in this world affects the simulated ecosystem, which can be polluted, damaged, and destroyed. To succeed, players must make decisions as a group through a virtual government, making intelligent decisions based on simulation data taken from the game.

Eco exists alongside the classroom, running continuously and providing context to what students are learning in multiple fields: ecology, statistics, civics, leadership. It makes use of the physical proximity of a classroom by making that the council meeting, where students can take the opportunity to discuss and decide with others what course of action they should take in this shared vulnerable world, using data and graphs put forth by the game. It shares the experience with the teacher, presenting an aggregated view of all the challenges the players are immediately facing, creating dynamic curriculum and discussions that can be used in class and connected to other lessons. It lets the teacher be the guide and mentor, while the experience remains that of the students.

Through this ongoing virtual field trip that the whole class takes part in, we hope to provide a meaningful social context for multiple connected subjects, augmenting the school lives of students with a rich and connected experience.

Providing Stakes

Much has been said about the ability of video games to provide a safe place to explore, where failure is accepted and part of the learning process. This is no doubt a great feature of educational games, but less is said about how the opposite is also true: video games can provide meaningful stakes for players, an augmented world that they care about and share responsibility for with their peers. When this world is truly shaped by your decisions and can be damaged or destroyed, you suddenly have an immediate and pressing need for the knowledge you need to succeed. The fate of their virtual world now literally depends on their grasp of ecology, or statistics, or collaborative and leadership skills. Video games often pretend to make players the saviors of the world, but when that world can actually be destroyed and is shared among a group it becomes true.

Furthermore, by augmenting the social world of the classroom, you gain the intrinsic importance that students place on social interactions (which is often far and beyond the value student’s place on schoolwork). Whereas your skill in math and statistics would typically contribute nothing to your social connections in school (if not weaken them), in a socially connected game world that players care about, it becomes socially valuable, making students who understand it important contributors to the group. It’s hard to overestimate the importance that today’s students put into augmented worlds; their lives and social connections are so intertwined with technology that they can scarcely be separated. Education currently has the ability to use that same magic in ways that benefit student learning in massive ways.

For this to happen, we’ll need to get over our fear of social connections through the internet. We have long since abandoned this fear in the rest of our lives (we now regularly summon strangers through the internet and get into their cars, a once unthinkable action made safe by a well-designed system), but education is a sticking point. This is understandable, as particular caution is needed with children, but once one understands the potential value of what’s at stake and sees it’s a solvable problem, it becomes worth solving.

An Opportunity

As game designers, we have a tremendous opportunity, and indeed responsibility, to bring the incredible advances in video games into education. The world of education remains a slow-moving one, set in a larger world that is very much not, and expanding an education system designed for the industrial age to fit the information age (and whatever comes next) is unarguably an urgent and imperative task.

I strongly believe that this task will fall to game designers, those creators of innocuous entertainment, having advanced their art across its history into a precise and powerful tool, repurposed into something that can shape education into what it needs to be: a spring of inspiration and connection in a student’s life, fueling them with the self-drive they need to guide their own lives into success and happiness, while directing the unimaginably rapid evolution of our world towards a place we will all want to live.(source:Gamasutra

 


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