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(EMAILWIRE.COM, March 13, 2013 ) San Francisco, CA -- A new alliance between educators and innovators has been made through a version of SimCity to stem students' general boredom and electrify the future U.S. Scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.
The unprecedented agreements between two influential foundation of leading academics, two global testing firms and the video game industry could be ready to redefine house schools teach basic skills through gaming.
The method has been tinkered with over the past several months at the Silicon Valley offices of the world's largest video game developers and an alliance is being pushed to develop and market off-the-shelf games that will lead kids toward “college and career success”. The move is to help the United States education system succeed where it has failed in the past at creating interest in particular fields.
The nation has been lacking in its production of well-rounded scientists, engineers, and mathematicians for high-tech job industries. An estimated 8 million will be needed in the next half-decade alone, putting pressure on the nation and its schools to find a way to bridge the gap.
Schools have been a bore to students in the past, and in a report from Indiana University's High School Survey of Students Engagement, 65% of students are sincerely bored “at least every day in class”. One in six students report being bored in each class.
Enter GlassLab, which stands for Games, Learning, and Assessment Lab, and its effort to envision the use of video games to spur the interest of students in areas such as technological development, engineering, and mathematics as career options.
Housed in Redwood Shores, California, offices of video game giant Electronic Arts, a team's first effort debuts Tuesday. The effort includes a free online community based on the rebooted SimCity (a long-time classic) along with free less plans for teachers to help students guide the development of skills cultivated within the game.
Within the game, players act as city-planner and mayor of a fictional town which they develop from the ground up. They are in charge of building infrastructure, industry, business, and residential areas, and create a town, city, and metropolis that thrives under their guiding eye.
A sample of SimCity EDU lesson asks students to prioritize the public works projects and “explain reasoning,” with writing assignments set to supplement the actual playing of the game. Gameplay at both school and home then tests out the students' hypotheses of how to best build a thriving town.
"Being able to touch something, being able to experiment with it, I think, really can make a difference in a kid's life," says Lucy Bradshaw of Maxis Games, SimCity's publisher.
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