Euclid's Elements as a Game

"If video games had been around in 350 BC, Euclid would have made a video game," Devlin told me. The thirteen books of Euclid's Elements would have been the supplemental material, a PDF file that you could read if you wanted to. "People think I'm joking—I absolutely mean that. Euclid would not have written a textbook, he would have designed a video game." Peek at any of his proofs, Devlin said, and you'll quickly find that the great Greek mathematician, often called the father of geometry, ...

 Teachers Must Put Themselves in the Student's Place

According to Devlin, teachers have a responsibility to learn about kids' interests. "It's not the students' responsibility to put themselves in our place. As teachers, it's our responsibility to put ourselves in the students' place. And if they are in a digital world, where they will invest many hours solving difficult, challenging problems in a video game, it would be criminal if we didn't start where they are and take advantage of the things they want to do. That's the world they live in, t...

 Applications for Simulated Worlds

Consider that applications of simulated worlds and simulated games to science and social science research are on the increase. Businesses build virtual worlds for commercial purposes. Scientists utilize video games to crowd-source solutions to protein folding, to invesfigate complexity theory and artificial life, to visualize the physics of black holes, and to research economic, social, and psychological behaviors. Call of Duty, Second Life, World of Warcraft—and the software that makes the...

 Patenting Video Games as an Analytic Exercise

My initial reaction to discovering the Tapper patent was that it seemed like a hilarious parody. There are many silly patents, but this patent isn't silly in only the usual way, that it proposes an invention where I'm skeptical patent protection is really in order. It reads parodically because it seems to be describing the wrong thing entirely: It takes the formal structure of a patent, which is most at home when describing machines and other devices, and uses it to write a strange kind of g...

 Flow Promotes Learning

Experiences that are well aligned with flow are those that we have no trouble committing to for a long time. We concentrate on them for hours at a time because we’re getting rewarded for that concentration. Even more important, perhaps, is that when we’re playing games, we want to enter that deep state of concentration. Well-crafted experiences offer a deep and effortless involvement that separates the experience of play from the experience of ordinary life. These experiences are enjoyabl...

 Gamification: Ability-Based Challenge

In a study of what makes video games so captivating, the key element was found to be variable ability-based challenge for players. Th e most popular games took players through increasingly challenging levels as they became more and more skillful. As skill improved, the next challenge motivated new mastery to just the right extent such that the player could reach the next goal with practice and persistence. Th e most motivating video games are ones in which players make the correct move about ...

 China to Rate Online Behaviour in Social Credit System

Chinese internet firms are definitely interested, as Ant Financial, a subsidiary of ecommercegiant Alibaba, recently showed. To its popular app Alipay it added a new service which rated a person's credit worthiness on a scale of 350 to 950 points. This score is not only determined by one's lending behavior, but also by hobbies and friends. If friends have a poor lending reputation, this reflects badly on the person, just as prolonged playing of video games. Buying diapers indicates responsibi...

 Game-Based Learning VS Gamification

Game-based learning is another great way to empower your students to engage with intellectual problems. They get to experience the fiero rush that comes with knowing that they successfully overcame a challenge. That’s right: game-based learning is different from gamification. Gamification is about making a non-game into a game. Game-based learning usually refers to using actual digital video games as a classroom tool (although, traditional non electronic role playing and board games work ex...

 How to Talk Math With Kids

Some simple ways to work numbers into the conversation: Note numbers on signs when you’re walking or driving with children: speed limits and exit numbers, building addresses, sale prices in store windows. Ask children to count how many toys they’re playing with, how many books they’ve pulled out to read, or how many pieces of food are on their plate. Use numbers when you refer to time, dates, and temperatures: how many hours and minutes until bedtime, how many weeks and days until a hol...

 A good game teaches you how to play it

What you eventually discover as you continue to play is that Portal is a game about escaping from rooms that operate according to rules you are unaware of. You learn that each room is a puzzle, increasingly booby-trapped, and the game requires you to understand more and more complex physics in order to get out. If you don’t teach yourself the physics of each new room— that is, if you don’t learn the rules of the game—you’ll be stuck there forever, listening to the AI system repeat h...