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Will Wright popped up on NPR, and he had a chance to interview anyone he wanted to. His choice was Edward O. Wilson, professor emeritus at Harvard University, and boy was Mr. Wright surprised when he heard Professor Wilson spout this bit about games.
"I'll go to an even more radical position. I think games are the future in education. We're going through a rapid transition now. We're about to leave print textbooks behind. For example, I envision visits to different ecosystems that the student could actually enter – taking this path, going to that hill – with an instructor. That could be a rain forest, a tundra, or a Jurassic forest."
In just a few sentences, Professor Wilson really makes me believe that educational games could be fun, as well as integral tools for the learning process. Both Wright and Wilson continue on with this topic in the full interview, which you can find right here.
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He has a point about the interactive part of visiting an area and interacting for example running from a T-rex in a game to save 'himself', might make a student understand the ferocity and learn more about the T-rex cause of that, than seeing a still picture.
I still think books are valuable, just thing there are better tools to help teach now a days. Mass Effect is a great example of visiting planets, learning about them, about materials, there composition, etc, etc. I mean 90% of the universe of it was made up, but the Universe housing Earth was acurate (except the story parts) and gave good explination (too bad you could only visit the moon).
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He's like the top Myrmecologist in the world. That's what I'm doing, Myrmecology (the study of ants). Freakin' sweeeeet!!! WE BOTH LOVE VIDEO GAMES TOO!