A Win-Win Scenario: 'Game School' Aims to Engage and Educate

A NYC school adopts the problem-solving techniques of video games.

ByABC News
January 8, 2009, 1:42 AM

August 6, 2007— -- Don't use the word "fun" to describe what will go on in the Game School, a proposed New York City public school that will use "game design and game-inspired methods" to educate sixth through 12th graders.

According to Katie Salen, executive director of the Gamelab Institute of Play and one of the masterminds of the proposal, there are better words for the sensation the students will get when they solve a hard puzzle or get through a game level.

"The work feels meaningful," says Salen. "You feel like you're gaining mastery."

Salen is being careful about her phrasing because she doesn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about the proposed school, which will open in the fall of 2009 if it's approved by New York's Department of Education. "The first reaction some people have is, 'Okay, this is a school about video games, and kids are going to be playing video games all day in school.' That's not the idea," she says.

Rather, Salen and other planners are looking at how games naturally engage players and teach them new skills, and hope to apply those principles to create kids who not only ace their SATs, but are also well suited for the 21st century.

Games offer a context for problem-solving with immediate feedback, and often involve social interaction that can reinforce lessons learned, Salen wrote in a proposal. Combine that process with the skills that modern games encourage -- like computer literacy and navigating through complex information networks -- and you have the basis for a brand new pedagogy, Salen believes.

The planners will devote this year plotting a curriculum, and will test pieces of it in high school classrooms the following school year. Right now, the ideas are vague but intriguing: Alternate reality games could be used to study science, as those players typically seek out and analyze data, and then propose and test their hypotheses. Salen also envisions harnessing the creative urges that kids already express through fan fiction, blogging and the creation of avatars and online identities.