Eric Zimmerman co-founded The Institute of Play, a nonprofit organisation that has opened public schools in NYC and Chicago based on games and play as the model for learning. Many experts believe that success in the twenty-first century depends on education that treats higher order skills, like the ability to think, solve complex problems or interact critically through language and media. Games naturally support this form of education. They are designed to create a compelling complex problem space or world, which players come to understand through self-directed exploration. Games create a compelling need to know, a need to ask, examine, assimilate and master certain skills and content areas.
There are other attributes of games that facilitate learning. One of these is the state of being known as play. Much of the activity of play consists in failing to reach the goal established by a game’s rules. And yet players rarely experience this failure as an obstacle to trying again and again, as they work toward mastery. There is something in play that gives players permission to take risks considered outlandish or impossible in “real life.” There is something in play that activates the tenacity and persistence required for effective learning.
There are three key moments in game play with important implications for learning. The first is when a would-be player approaches a game and expresses a wish to participate: “Can I try? Can I join in?” The second moment comes when a player asks, “Can I save it?” In other words, “I’m deeply invested in this experience, which has value and meaning, and I’d like to pick up where I left off.” The third moment comes when a player attains a level of mastery and offers advice to a novice: “Want me to show you how?” A corollary to this moment occurs in the community of practice that arises around games, when one player asks another, “How did you do that? Will you teach me?”
The Institute is most interested in games as complex eco-systems extending beyond the game space to involve networks of people in a variety of roles and rich interactions. Learning represents just one activity within this larger, highly engaging system.
Retrieved From: http://www.instituteofplay.org
https://generalassemb.ly/instructors/eric-zimmerman/1469
http://www.gamesforchange.org/bio/eric-zimmerman/
