School Uses Video Games To Teach Thinking Skills
A novel public school in New York City has taken the video game as its model for how to teach. Students use video games and design them as part of their classes. As Quest to Learnis wrapping up its first year, those behind the program say game-based learning is integral to 21st century literacy.
A 'Key' To Learning
Most kids don't need instructions to figure out how to play video games. Something about these games turns kids into phenomenal learners.
"The big idea of the school is we looked at how games work, literally how they're built and the way they support learning, and we thought could we design a school from the ground up that supported learning in the way games do," says Katie Salen, one of the executive directors of Quest to Learn.
This idea has been advocated for years by scholar James Gee, one of Salen's mentors. They believe video games are key to a new kind of literacy.
"In math, we're traveling around the world," says sixth-grader Rocco Rose, a student at Quest to Learn and a citizen of Creepytown — an imaginary city where his class learns math and English.
The students play travel agents, convert currencies, keep blogs about their travel experiences and