I’ve heard it said that the English language is inadequate.  Because we have fewer words than other languages, there are some things we can’t say or accurately describe.  One of these instances is that we have no word or phrase for ‘educational quiz program’.

Browse things labeled as ‘educational games’, and you are sure to find many of them.  Programs where the ‘player’ (or perhaps in this case, ‘user’ is a more accurate word) is asked a series of questions.  Which one of these items will fit in the gap shown?  Click the word that starts with the letter L.  Sort these numbers into powers of 2 and powers of 3.  There are a few different definitions of the word ‘game’ out there, but set ups like this don’t really fit into any of them.

To me, programs like this are not games because you either know the answer, or you don’t.  If you do, you might enjoy yourself because it feels good to be correct, and computers are good at giving positive feedback.  But if you don’t know the answer, you’re generally left to guess.  Maybe the program will have helpful feedback that you’ll be in the mood to listen to and remember, but maybe not.  In any case, the experience isn’t likely to feel game-y at all, if you don’t know the answers the program is looking for.

Take the experience of many of these so-called educational games, and try to recreate them in person with a child.  If another person asked the child afterward, “Did you enjoy the game,” I venture to guess the child would say something along the lines of “Oh, we didn’t play a game. The lady just asked me a bunch of questions.”

So why are so many computer quiz programs calling themselves games?  Beats the heck out of me.  I suppose it’s part of the “Kids won’t even realize they’re learning!” phenomenon.  I don’t know where that comes from either.  Adults who use this phrase must have hated learning when they were growing up, if they can’t remember what is inherently fun about it.  My question is, why are these adults attempting to teach, if they hated learning so much?  Another possibility is that adults who don’t play games observe that children enjoy playing video games, and they assume children will find anything to be fun, so long as it is delivered via a video game system or computer.  Clearly these adults do not really comprehend games at all.

There are times when drill and practice is necessary to master a topic, and a computer program might well be a useful tool.  But ‘game’ is not an accurate word to describe the experience.  Shall we try to coin a new phrase?

My stake in the matter is that I want ‘educational games’ to have less of a dirty stigma.  The number of educational quizzes poisoning the educational games category is so pervasive that many kids assume that’s what all educational games are.  Parents sometimes fall in this trap, too.  I recently read a review of an educational game where a parent left one star and said, among other things, “The game never asked any educational stuff.”  Ouch!

Last week, I sat down with my Girl Scout troop to play Fluxx.  Before I even had the cards out of the sleeve, one of the girls said, “Is this an educational game?  I’m not playing an educational game.”  I told the girls I had a theory that all games were educational, it was just a question of what you were learning.  A different girl said “What about Hide and Seek?”  I paused to think about it a moment, and responded, “Well, to play Hide and Seek, you have to think about the people you’re playing with, and where they might hide, or where they would look, right?  That’s creative thinking.”  Actually, I suppose it’d be more accurate to say it’s metacognitive analysis.  But Hide and Seek is clearly a strategy game.  The first several times you play, you may hide and look in the same few places.  Under the bed.  Under the kitchen sink.  In the closet.  But play it enough and many players get more creative.  They hide behind the billowy curtains that reach all the way to the floor.  Or under a pile of stuffed animals.  Maybe in an unmade bed with a lot of pillows and blankets.  I remember sneaking from one hiding place to a place I had already heard the seeker check.  That’s leveling up into Advanced Hide and Seek!  (Or maybe it was just cheating.)  Regardless, there was clearly learning going on.

I don’t think we’ll ever reach a point where most kids seek out educational games.  Kids do spend hours in school each day, and no one could blame them for wanting to relax and not purposefully learn something every moment of the day.  And then there’s always the social stigma of not wanting to appear too smart.  Educational games will probably never be as cool as action games or fighting games, at least in the popular sense of the word.  But I’m okay with that.  I just want my genre to get more respect!

What is an educational game then, you may ask?  (If the one star review parent above is reading, I hope she asks.)  I believe an educational game is one that was deliberately designed to make the player think about, or experience something academically or practically useful.  Some examples would be Lemmings, World of Goo, and Enigmo.  In each of these games, the player must think about how to solve a new problem each level, using only a limited number and type of tools and supplies.  The Carmen Sandiego series games give children an experience of real world geography as they do the familiar video game task of pursuing a criminal.  The Oregon Trail simulates the experience of leading a family across the country in a conestoga wagon, with challenges the pioneers would have faced. 

Many of these examples have been around for decades, are still popular with kids today, and are fondly remembered by those of us who grew up with them.  See?  Educational games don’t have to be experiences to endure just because they’re good for you.

Photo by ArSISa7, shared via Creative Commons.

Math educational products like textbooks, games, and TV shows such as Square One and Cyberchase, are often written by people who are “good at math.”  When I say good at math, I mean people who did well in school at it.  It’s an important distinction.  In the United States, math is traditionally taught as a set of procedures to memorize.  To a lot of people, that’s all math is.  People who rise to the top of this system and earn degrees in mathematics don’t see what’s wrong with it, because the system worked so well for them, and so we keep perpetuating much of the same things in math ed.

The thing is, you don’t have to be good at memorizing procedures to be good at math.  You might have to be to succeed on standardized tests, but that’s a different matter.  

I did kind of poorly in math myself, growing up.  I definitely fell into the camp of kids who simply thought “I’m not good at math.”  Now that I’m grown, I realize I need to think about math visually, not as a set of symbols.  For example, I never remember what 3 + 7 is, but I’ve learned to think of it as 4 + 6, which I know is 10.  I suspect the only reason I know 6 + 4 is 10 is because I quickly internalized that 5 + 5 = 10, and I had some years of practice remembering six and four are each one away from five.  Maybe with time I’ll remember by rote that 3 + 7 is 10, but it’s been over twenty years since I was made to memorize the addition facts in school, and it hasn’t happened yet, so we shall see.

When I think of these concepts in my head, I don’t really see the symbols 3 and 7, or 4 and 6, or even 5 and 5.  What I do see are visual representations of five and five.  I simply shuffle the cubes in my mind until they’re organized in clusters I can work with.  If I’m calculating a 15% tip on $35.00, I know I need $1.50 for each of the three sets of $10, and then half of that again (75 cents) for the remaining $5.  $5.25.

What makes the new iPhone game Arithmaroo so awesome is that it supports visual thinking of quantities.  I wish I had made this game!  A similar idea has been kicking around in my mind for a few years, but I had conceived of it a little differently, and I dare say, Arithmaroo is better than what I had thought of.  Bravo!

Playing Arithmaroo is very simple.  The player is presented with different arrangements of numbers, and you are to select the corresponding numeral from the grid at the bottom of the screen.  If right-brain thinkers like me are ever going to succeed at performing math at the speed that symbol-oriented rote memorization thinkers do, Arithmaroo is great exercise.  Equally important, Arithmaroo gives visual thinkers an opportunity to play an overtly mathematical game and experience success.  Hurrah!

And lest you think I’m no good at math, I protest.  My boyfriend may be getting a degree in mathematics, and he may have passed several levels of advanced calculus with flying colors (Who even knew there were different levels of calculus?) but I can run circles around him efficiently packing the dishwasher, a suitcase, or the trunk of a car.  I can also cut a perfectly straight line into a roll of wrapping paper like there was nothing to it.  These tasks are all mathematical, they’re just spatial and not procedural.  I can’t truly comprehend the way some people find spatial tasks difficult, and in this way, I’m not much different from teachers and school administrators don’t understand why some students just can’t seem to do well in math class. Three cheers to Arithmaroo for bringing other ways of thinking about math to a video game for kids!

Arithmaroo is available on the App Store for $1.99.  Today only (Friday 4/23/2010), the game is FREE as part of a special promotion.  Check it out!

For the past several months, I have been concentrating on producing the iPhone game I designed, and job hunting.  I haven’t been doing much work on new designs.  But in late November, President Obama announced a STEM Game Challenge.  It’s part of a larger effort to step up Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education in public schools.  In recent decades, the United States has not scored well in international tests of science and math abilities.  We need to change that if we’re going to continue to be a successful nation.

President Obama’s live webcast got the design fires cooking again on the back burner of my mind.  Designing a STEM intensive video game is a truly challenging problem.  I recently came across this really excellent article that outlines all of the things one must consider in educational game design.  One line that rang particularly true for me was "Topics should not be forced--games should be one medium among many for learning in and out of the classroom." There are many attempts at games about topics like photosynthesis, but most of what results is not a game at all, but a more typical rote classroom activity.

For a game to succeed in a school environment, it has to fit the constraints of the school realities.  In most schools, that means limited internet access, limited work stations, and limited time.  Many class periods are under an hour, and when you subtract the time it takes to walk to the computer lab as a class and get 30 students settled at 30 machines that may or may not work, you’re left with a short play session.

The trickiest consideration though, is that you have to fit in an established curriculum.  Teachers are usually told exactly what to cover over the course of the academic year.  If you build the greatest science game in the world, a teacher may not be able to use it with her students if she already feels she doesn’t have enough time to cover the required curriculum.

Video games are a natural fit to teach STEM related skills, because many commercially produced games involve problem solving and collaboration skills.  (For more on this, see research conducted by EDC.)  When designed well, games help players hone the 21st century skills that employers look for today.  To be a successful scientist, you can’t merely follow established procedures 100% of the time.  Much of the student experience of STEM subjects in public school is about how well they can execute an established procedure, so video games are a great opportunity to let students do something completely different. 

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the STEM Game Challenge.  It's exciting that the President of the United States is acknowledging the potential of video games as a learning environment in such a powerful way.  This could turn out to be the best thing that's happened to educational games in a long time.

Picture of a game at the Museum of Science and Industry by croncast, shared via Creative Commons.

I recently received a request from zinc Roe Design to review their latest preschool apps; three in a series called Tickle Tap Apps.  It’s always good to keep abreast of the latest kids offerings in the App Store, so I was happy to oblige.  Here goes!

Sort Slider asks players to match full color objects with their silhouettes, one at a time.  You play by dragging the color picture with your finger, or tilting the device until it slides into the correct shadow.  Practicing the skill of observing the shape and characteristics of objects could come in handy in school, because standardized tests often include questions that require careful observation.  To me, this feels more like an academic activity than a game, but then kids in the target age range like school, so this may still hold appeal.
Sort Slider features an adorable dog mascot who provides positive feedback after each correct answer.  He doesn’t talk, but he does bark, and is obviously pleased with the player’s success.
I would place the target age range for this app around 3 years old.  The objects used in the app have distinct shadows that young children should easily be able to differentiate, but this may make it too boring for kids 4 and up.

Count Caddy is another app that features a good educational concept for preschoolers.  Counting games for kids are a dime a dozen, but they usually don’t take the challenge beyond touching items one at a time to hear numbers in sequence spoken aloud.  Count Caddy is a young child’s counting activity done right.  Instead of simply tapping an item to hear a voice count it, the objects appear one at a time, and the player drags it to move it into a collection area.  This allows the child a moment to process the fact that she is adding it to a group. 
What really makes Count Caddy first class among counting apps is that it introduces the concept of counting by twos and threes, sometimes called 'skip counting'.  Counting by twos and threes is a concept kids don’t usually fully understand until kindergarten, first grade, or even later, but I think it’s great to expose preschoolers to topics that are a little advanced for them.  A child as young as 2 could play Count Caddy, because the only action necessary is sweeping items across the screen to the collection area.  In counting by twos and threes, the objects are already lumped together in groups, and the narrator counts by two and three aloud.

Sound Shaker is an app I would only recommend for a very mellow child.  It’s more of a toy than a game, which is not to put the app down in any way.  It’s a noise maker that a child can customize.  There are 6 sounds to choose from.  Once you’ve selected a sound to work with, you tap the screen to make fingertip-sized balls appear that will chime the selected sound when they hit the edge of the screen.  The app has great physics, so you can make a pile of balls and slowly tumble them around.  The one that impacted to make noise gets a star on it so you can see which impact triggered the noise.  Another feature I didn’t discover until the third or so time I played is that you can hold your finger down on the screen to make items that sound at a higher pitch.  A narrator does say about 12 seconds in to "tap the screen longer to make new sounds," but I guess I was previously too busy playing to really listen to her.  I fall into the camp of people that try to tune any narrative I hear out as an annoyance, even though it may be providing helpful information.  That’s OK though.  Discovering this feature on the third play made the game novel again.
I haven’t observed a child play with the app, but it is my fear that the game encourages you to shake the iPhone / iPod Touch vigorously, because sounds are only made when objects collide with the edge of the screen.  To their credit, you can use your finger to fling balls into each other or against the wall, and shaking the device fast does not make the balls move fast.  They seem to have selected a reasonable top speed to discourage rough shaking.  That doesn’t mean a child won’t want to try, though.  It would be all too easy for the device to slip right out of the hand and go flying across the room.  I would recommend this app only to those parents who have a rugged grippy rubber case on their device.

Each of these apps is currently priced at $1.99 in the iPhone App Store.

When I tell people that I design iPhone games for preschoolers, some people ask me, "Who would give an iPhone to a preschooler?"  Now usually these people are not parents, or are not into the latest technology like smart phones.  Other people don't question it, because it makes sense to them.  Perhaps they've seen small children on the train, or sitting at a restaurant, playing with Mom or Dad's iPhone.  A lot of people are concerned, as I initially was, that a child would break an iPhone.  But as I and many others have witnessed, children are actually quite careful with the devices.

But a question many of us still have is, "What does a preschooler do with an iPhone?"

Marc Prensky gave his 4 year old son his old iPhone when he upgraded himself to a new one.  He profiled his son's usage of the device in a recent article.   As one might expect, he plays educational games on it.  But he also uses the iPhone as a prop in his imaginative play.  Marc said his son likes to pretend he runs a taxi dispatch service, and he uses the voice recorder to act that out.  That must be adorable, and now Marc could save those recordings on his computer.

Perhaps most notable is how quickly his son tired of the educational games available, which Marc described as activities that included forming letters and recognizing words.  He said his son requested "fun" games like they have on the Nintendo DS.  Designers, take note!  Games should be games, and not activities kids would do sitting at a desk in a classroom.  Even 4 year olds know the difference!  Game designers must catch up.

Picture of 12 month old girl using iPhone courtesy of gnta, shared via Creative Commons.