Futuristic Video Games May Change the Way You Learn

[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”B008BZOVS8″ locale=”us” height=”160″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41d1O0U91iL._SL160_.jpg” width=”150″]Futuristic video games are set to change the traditional education system now. While our society has gradually started to incorporate general technology to enhance curriculum, we’ve still only scratched the surface of possibilities that tech-based learning offers for the next generation.

What if we viewed video games not as virtual distractions or mere educational assistors, but as a dominant method for teaching kids real-life skills and problem solving? This is exactly the kind of future that GlassLab foresees us heading into within the next couple of decades.

Collaborating with major gaming and education companies such as Electronic Arts, Institute of Play, and Pearson’s, GlassLab has adopted mechanics from the widely popular SimCity franchise and uses them in SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! In this simulation, students act as mayor and must balance out their city’s pollution problems while keeping citizens employed and happy. What makes Pollution City! unique is that it allows progress to be assessed by teachers as students make decisions based on trial-and-error; these assessments measure what’s known as “systems thinking” in accordance with Next Generation Science Standards.

Although this simulation generally applies to the challenges of being a mayor, it incorporates ecological, economic and humanitarian scenarios within the gaming format. This can makes students more engaged and eager to tackle big picture concepts at earlier ages and boost conscious development outside the classroom.

In the video below, Illinois teacher Amy Stefanski discusses beta-testing SimCityEDU in her classroom and the effects that it has on her students.

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[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”B0029LJIFG” locale=”us” height=”160″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41IoGmNUjvL._SL160_.jpg” width=”118″]This is just a small glimpse into the developing world of video games tailored for school curriculums. Engaging and investing in systems thinking will allow for accelerated learning and—in turn—yield a more globally conscious generation. This generation would, potentially, not only be able to detect and analyze global trends on a much larger scale, but actually be able to simulate present trends and their impacts on the future. Of course, this largely depends on the advancement of future simulation and coding capabilities; yet the direction we’re heading in makes this reality all the more viable.

Also coming out on November 12 is the new SimCity 5 expansion called Cities of Tomorrow. The biggest draw of Cities of Tomorrow includes plausible future technology and structures such as service drones, Mag Levs and multi-zone Mega Towers that allow Sims to live and work far above the ground. In the following video, designer Stone Librande walks us through the new features and analyzes the choices players can make. The more we’re immersed in simulated worlds with future tech—while being on the cusp of actualizing these ideals—the more our society will be influence to head in this direction at a more accelerated rate. In this day and age, we are very much playing in the worlds that we are soon to be living in.

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Image source: simcity.com

November 12, 2013 By Cory Healy

About the author

Cory Healy is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. When he's not writing about tech or music, he can either be found delivering food on bike throughout lower Manhattan, or playing computer games at home.