Computer game to boost key skills

[TheBaldyMan]

The comp. sci. dept of an English technical college has used Neverwinter Nights to promote basic literacy and numeracy skills among their less enthusiastic students.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6254989.stm">BBC Education full story

Modified computer games aimed at disaffected learners could help win the war against poor basic skills.
<snip>
So they took apart Atari's popular computer game Neverwinter Nights and rebuilt it with educational challenges the player must meet to progress.

Success rates in key skills at the Mansfield college has trebled to 94%.

The new game, aimed at disaffected learners, was launched at this week's Bett show on educational technology at London's Olympia.

Nigel Oldman, who helped transform the game into a learning tool fitting in with the national curriculum, said the college needed to take drastic measures to tackle their "disaffected students".

They would come knocking on the staff room door and wouldn't let us go until we had taught them how to calculate area

<snip>

The story is a bit surprising because the students were claiming that they had been taught basic literacy at school and 'hadn't used it since' - yeah right. It seems you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.

editted to add links:

http://www.alteredlearning.com/">Altered Learning - the mod that the college is using

http://www.bettshow.com/bett/show_home1.asp">Bett 2007 - January's educational exhibition

http://www.westnotts.ac.uk/">West Nottingham College - refreshingly Robin Hood free

[landdaddy]

1. And eyesight in some cases

Something I came across this AM:

Research says playing video games improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart


Video games that contain high levels of action can actually improve your vision, claim researchers at the University of Rochester. Their findings, which will appear in the journal Psychological Science, show that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter—a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6009

[TheBaldyMan]

2. and they keep you young! is there anything computer games can't do

;)

[landdaddy]

3. Forget the "Sylvan Learning Center"

we could begin a "Half Life Learning Center" or some such. :freak:

[Twillig]

4. Somebody will code a bot or some H4X to get around that.

"The comp. sci. dept of an English technical college has used Neverwinter Nights to promote basic literacy and numeracy skills among their less enthusiastic students."

GG PWNT!

[TheBaldyMan]

5. if anyone gets to the stage of hacking the test ...

you can safely say they've passed.