Michelle Basch, wtop.com
WASHINGTON – Many kids often get in trouble at school for playing games in class. Soon, it may become the way they learn.
“Online social gaming may actually replace textbooks in schools,” says Patrick Tucker with the Bethesda, Md.-based World Future Society.
The prediction is one of the society’s Top 10 Forecasts for 2012 and beyond.
“It’s a little radical, the idea that students learn more when they’re engaged as they are when they’re playing games,” Tucker says.
“In addition to encouraging collaborations, games also allow students to learn from their mistakes through trial and error.”
A startup company called Primer Labs wants to make knowledge playable, so it’s come up with a first-person shooter game called Code Hero that teaches you how to program a computer.
“It’s like Halo or Doom, and as you shoot at stuff you’re actually learning Javascript,” says Tucker.
In addition, Tucker says there’s an entire country wants to shift to this kind of learning.
“The Republic of South Korea actually has a plan in place to replace all textbooks with sort of iPads,” he says.
“The gamification of education could just fundamentally improve the way we learn over the next 10 to 20 years,” says Tucker.
Read the World Future Society’s entire list of top 10 forecasts for 2012 and beyond.
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(Copyright 2011 by WTOP. All rights reserved.)
