Gaming for the Future
By Janice Molloy
What if, instead of competing with video games for kids' attention, schools learned from them? Would students approach the classroom with the same enthusiasm and openness to learning that many reserve for digital environments?
Quest to Learn, a New York City public school that opened in 2009, is exploring these and other questions. According
to Katie Salen, one of the founders and a keynote speaker at the upcoming 2011 Systems Thinking in Action Conference, "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."
The curriculum is designed around "missions." At the beginning of each 10-week session, kids are dropped into complex challenges that they have no ability to solve. That mission is broken down into a series of smaller challenges that provide interdisciplinary, just-in-time learning.
As in a game environment, students always know where they are, how far they have come, and what they have to work on. Salen says, "Games understand how to incentivize players to want to get better." In the process, students become active problem solvers, using trial and error to figure out solutions to complex problems in collaboration with others.
Quest to Learn's ultimate goal is to increase students' engagement, equip them with strategies to become lifelong learners, and help them acquire 21st-century skills and competencies such as teamwork, creative problem solving, systems thinking, and time management. As a sign that this approach is gaining momentum, a second Quest to Learn school is opening in Chicago in the fall.
Video About Quest to Learn
NPR Story: School Uses Video Games to Teach Thinking Skills
Video of Katie Salen by the New Learning Institute
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.