Edu-Gaming: I’m Bored at

Edu-Gaming: I’m Bored at: "... in the hopes that some day we’ll have educational designers working on the same team as professional game designers and developers, to weave the educational content into the fabric of the game"

I think that creating a culture of Gamers that play AND CREATE games is a good goal for HiFives. The students who play, need to learn to create. The teachers who create, need to learn to play. And, instructional designers, need to figure out why games are intriguing and educational in order to 'weave' educational content into the game.

Weaving is a good word for it. It implies that these new educational gaming design teams must be equally expert in both the game and the education. That content can't simply be grafted on the game at some step in the design. When people graft on, say, a quiz that appears on a wall during a FPS type game, the student really isn't using the game at all other than as a reward. To climb Bloom's taxonomy, you have to weave the educational content into the game play that targets those areas.

Research is going on to figure these things out. It's research and development that could make a big difference.