Chapter 8 Reflections

Microworlds: A neat toy with some value.

I managed to have a debate tournament on the Saturday when this was covered. I am currently in the process of reading Mindstorms by Seymour Papert as penance. So far that is an interesting book but my brain is having trouble keeping it separated from the class textbook.

Throughout this chapter my mind kept wandering to the various "sim" games that have come and gone over the last decade or so. How does my nephew's manipulation of various features of an amusement park promote learning? In some ways learning has taken place, but can it be quantified to the satisfaction of our superiors? He certainly sees cause and effect relationships everywhere (he's a senior in HS now). Did they come from 'gaming'? Maybe. The problem is in documentation of data to prove the worth of such activity. Microworlds lose some of their "fun" if teacher gives a complex rubric for the goals to be met in an activity. A balance is certainly called for. You cannot get the hours on end, total immersion of my nephew's sim game but maybe you can get an hour or two toward a goal.

From personal experience, I recall when the amazing new TRS-80's showed up in my college's brand new computer lab. My economics professor had us play with a pirated copy of "Lemonade Stand". This was a free market simulation of a lemonade stand where you could manipulate the ingredients, price, marketing etc. and see the results in your "bottom line". Though we all felt like we were fooling around and maybe even wasting time, I haven't met an alum who has forgotten playing with it. Most of them also learned the inherent lessons of the game well after graduation. Nearly thirty years later, I still relate the lessons to any class that needs a dose of market economics. How often can we come up with something that has that kind of effect on our learning. The challenge is tough now because "sim" games are common and realism isn't the novelty it once was. Now we have to outdo that.

In actual practice I've left a few minutes at the end of a period to have kids play with any number of simulation websites. My motive was fun rather than content. However I have seen some residual effects later when I've referred back to the game as an example of a concept. In economics I've referred back to how complex marketing was in a game to illustrate the complexity of reality in the marketplace. All I'd have to do would be to add in the "rigor element" of what can we see in a game that might reflect reality in our manipulation of the variables of a marketplace. Long-term the goal might be to gain appreciation for the ripple effects of one change. Like the geometry and physics "microworlds" the student finds ways to manipulate a variable to get a result. Add assessment and stir until done.

Enough babbling!

BC