Can Digital Games Improve Our Schools?
By John Thompson.
With The Game Believes in You, Greg Toppo joins the ranks of great authors like Anya Kamenetz and James Paul Gee, who articulate a new, dynamic, creative, and holistic path to 21st– century schools. Like Kamenetz, Toppo shows how assessments embedded in computer games could inform authentic learning without the inherent downsides of today’s test-driven pedagogies. When combined with video gaming, these digital tools could unleash a golden age of learning. Like Gee, Toppo understands, “’Nobody has successfully underestimated a child.’” And, as Toppo concludes, children live inside a magic circle and know how powerful it is.” We adults “need to step back … then trust their creativity.”
Toppo’s basic political message is solid:
At exactly the same time that schools have taken the questionable path of implementing more high-stakes standardized tests keyed to the abilities of some imaginary bell-curved students, games have gone the opposite route, embedding sophisticated assessment into gameplay … becoming complex learning tools that promise to deflate the tired ‘teach to the test’ narrative that weighs down so many great teachers and schools.
Although my view of history is closer to that of Larry Cuban’s skeptical appraisal of how technology does and does not produce change, I would like to see Toppo proven right. While I know nothing firsthand about these newfangled games that kids are all playing, when I first began teaching we received great professional development on turning group learning into a game. Those fun lessons produced great results throughout my career, even after they were dismissed by test-lovers as silly progressivism. So, I welcome the potential of digital games to make school more engaging.
I also respect Toppo’s scrupulous neutrality in regards to education reform wars. While I am not his editor, I can play one in the blogosphere.
Toppo acknowledges that “teachers have had good reason to keep new technology at arm’s link,” and part of Can Digital Games Improve Our Schools? - Living in Dialogue: