Voici un lien à un site spécialisé dans les jeux vidéo pensés pour l’éducation : THE EDUCATION ARCADE. Les activités principales d’ Education Arcade consistent en le développement et la diffusion de jeux éducatifs, accompagnés de livrets sur l’utilisation des jeux pour l’apprentissage.
Le texte des livrets peut être téléchargé en bas et des exemples de jeux pour l’apprentissage de la physique sont inclus. Le site contient aussi une liste de publications de K. Squire; E. Klopfer, W. Holland, H. Jenkins sur le jeu vidéo et son utilisation pour l’apprentissage.
The Education Arcade was established by leading scholars of digital games and education. Researchers at MIT explored key issues in the use of a wide variety of media in teaching and learning through the Games-to-Teach Project, a Microsoft-funded initiative with MIT Comparative Media Studies that ran between 2001 and 2003. The project resulted in a suite of conceptual frameworks designed to support learning across math, science, engineering, and humanities curricula. Working with top game designers from industry and with faculty across MIT’s five schools, researchers produced 15 game concepts with supporting pedagogy that showed how advanced math, science and humanities content could be uniquely blended with state-of-the-art game play.
The Education Arcade explores games that promote learning through authentic and engaging play. TEA’s research and development projects focus both on the learning that naturally occurs in popular commercial games, and on the design of games that more vigorously address the educational needs of players.
THE EDUCATION ARCADE releases two white papers to guide the development and dissemination of educational games (and other technologies):
Moving Learning Games Forward. Moving Learning Games Forward takes a look at the gaming landscape, both learning games and commercial games, and makes recommendations to a broad range of stakeholders on reinforcing and expanding the growing interest in learning games. Authored by TEA’s Director, Eric Klopfer, its Creative Director, Scot Osterweil, and the New School’s Katie Salen, the paper makes the case that, “games can engage players in learning that is specifically applicable to ‘schooling’,” and, “there are means by which teachers can leverage the learning in such games without disrupting the worlds of either play or school.” In making this case, the paper examines the contemporary states of play, of games, and of schools while also looking to the past for avoidable mistakes. Finally, in looking to the future, the paper makes design recommendations that will move learning games forward to the 21st century.
Using the Technology of Today in the Classroom Today is specifically targeted to classroom teachers. This paper, researched by Jennifer Groff with assistance from Jason Haas, provides classroom teachers with compelling reasons to incorporate new technologies like games, simulations, and social networking into their classroom and strategies to overcome potential barriers. The authors introduce specific examples of these technologies being used to successfully enhance classroom learning, and they use case studies with specific teachers to illustrate some best practices in classroom learning with technology. The paper also introduces the i5 framework, which provides specific strategies for overcoming the many potential problems that come with introducing new and complicated tools into schools.
THE EDUCATION ARCADE projects have touched on mathematics, science, history, literacy, and language learning, and have been tailored to a wide range of ages. They have been designed for personal computers, handheld devices and on-line delivery:
SUPERCHARGED! Many science educators advocate conceptual or qualitative physics, the notion that physics is best taught not by mathematical formulae, but rather through experiments, labs, demonstrations, and visualizations which help students understand physical phenomena conceptually. Consistent with the Physics First curricular movement, this perspective maintains that a deep, fundamental understanding of physics provides a solid basis for future science learning. How to engage younger students in complex physics thinking is a challenge, but computer simulations provide one intriguing way to engage students in the study of abstract, complex physical phenomena. Digital technologies can immerse the learner in worlds that not only represent scientific phenomena, but behave according to the rules of physics. Simulated worlds can be programmed to behave by Newtonian or Maxwellian rules. By representing the simulation through digital gaming conventions, educators can potentially increase engagement while also fostering deeper learning, as learners engage in critical and recursive game play, whereby they generate hypotheses about the game system, develop plans and strategies, observe their results and adjust their hypotheses about the game system. Experiences in game worlds become experiences that students can draw upon in thinking about scientific worlds, using their intuitive understandings developed in simulated worlds to interpret physics problems. By representing complex scientific content through tangible, experienced nontextually-mediated representations, simulated worlds may also engage reluctant learners in the study of science. It was under these principles that Supercharged! was designed and built. The game places students in a three dimensional enviroment where they must navigate a spaceship by controlling the electric charge of the ship, placing charged particles around the space. Students must carefully plan their trajectory through each level by tracing the field lines that emmanate from charged objects, and in the process of doing so, develop a more hands on understanding of how charged particles interact. Paper
LABYRINTH. The Education Arcade’s Newest game, Labyrinth (working title) is an on-line puzzle adventure game, designed to promote math and literacy learning, and is targeted at middle-school students. The product of a collaboration between TEA, Maryland Public Television, and Fablevision, Johns Hopkins University, and Macro International, Labyrinth is funded by the U.S. Department of Education through a Star Schools grant. Teams of students will collaborate on solving the puzzles that make up the game’s core activity. These puzzles will address pre-algebra, with an emphasis on ratio, proportion, number sense, variables, data, and geometry. The story, delivered in graphic novel format will support literacy goals, as will the challenge of communicating with teammates about problem solving strategies.
TEA is designing Labyrinth. The challenge in any such design is finding what is game-like in an activity that we normally view as academic. Even when a puzzle emerges, there is still significant effort in adapting it to the technical parameters of the project and to the game story and setting. Just as challenging is the need to envision a game that will feel authentic to students while meeting teachers’ educational objectives.
CADUCEUS, an online puzzle-adventure game for tweens. Caduceus exposes young players (ages 8 to 12) to the concepts of altruism and compassion, while also testing their skills of logic, reason and creativity.
AUGMENTED REALITY GAMES. The MIT Teacher Education Program, in conjunction with The Education Arcade, has been working on creating “Augmented Reality” simulations to engage people in simulation games that combine real world experiences with additional information supplied to them by handheld computers.
The first of these games, Environmental Detectives (ED), is an outdoor game in which players using GPS guided handheld computers try to uncover the source of a toxic spill by interviewing virtual characters and conducting large scale simulated environmental measurements and analyzing data. This game has been run at three sites, including MIT, a nearby nature center, and a local high school. Early research has shown that this mode of learning is successful in engaging university and secondary school students in large scale environmental engineering studies, and providing an authentic mode of scientific investigation.