This article comes from the public number:Silicon Rabbit Race (ID: sv_race) , author: Lexie, from the title figure: vision China
An epidemic made many students experience the online class life for the first time, and also “drove them crazy”.
Because it’s tiring to insist on completing all online courses. The problem of screen fatigue bears the brunt, and it is also very prone to inattention.
How can you learn without fun and effort, like playing games, fun and fun?
Gamification education has gradually become a new focus, and it has become a track where the venture capital industry and the education community are struggling to pay attention.
First, the epidemic catalyst: learning while playing games
Assassin’s Creed: Learn History with Games
Before the epidemic, many teachers around the world have actually tried to combine the game with the teaching in the class. The occurrence of the epidemic has turned the scene of the course into the front line and the content should be upgraded.
Kevin, a Canadian history teacher, had planned to take students to Greece to study and study, but the outbreak caused the plan to soak. The witty teacher Kevin simply let the students explore in the game “Assassin’s Creed” and write the results into a report.
Although the plot of “Assassin’s Creed” is different from history, the developer has carried out many investigations and studies in the process of production, and it has been more realistically restored in terms of architecture, clothing, and life customs.
The “Discovery Journey” series launched in the previous two years has removed the combat system, joined dozens of tour guides provided by historians, and turned the game directly into a digital museum. For archiving, you can also test at the end.
Kevin’s approach was not a whimsy, according to Ubisoft and Monterey from Assassin’s CreedA study by University of Seoul showed that after 330 students used “journey of discovery” to study history, the correct rate of quizzes increased from 22% to 41%, and students were also very satisfied with this teaching material. welcome.
Ubisoft also opened two games of “Discovery Journey” in ancient Egypt and Greece to users for free during the epidemic. No wonder netizens said that Ubisoft is actually an education company.
Minecraft: My world is my master
For domestic netizens, Minecraft is a relatively familiar game. This classic sandbox game has two modes: survival and creation.
Survival mode is to collect resources, explore the world, and defend against monsters; while the creative mode is really open, players don’t have to worry about survival, they can also fly, and there are various resources that can be built as desired. For Minecraft players, Say, imagination is the only limit.
Roman Empire
Game of Thrones
Castle in the Forest
This is a great tool to inspire students’ creativity without spending money and not afraid of making mistakes. Anyone can explore everywhere, which is a freedom usually not given in the classroom.
Minecraft released an education model in 2016. The game comes with syllabus for each subject. Teachers can view the entire map and send it at will. Students can also take photos to show their work.
For teachers, Minecraft is simply an all-around classroom, and any subject can be displayed with a more vivid and relaxed game.
History subjects are even more powerful. Teachers can take students to “visit” the Seven Wonders of the World, Babylonia, and the Great Chinese God in the game to restore the Forbidden City.
Although there is no overly gorgeous game interface and sophisticated design, only with the two cores of “mine” and “craft”, Minecraft attracted Microsoft to acquire the game in 2014 with a strong US$2.5 billion Developer MojangStudios.
The industry generally speculates that Microsoft’s move is to use Minecraft’s entertainment and education to open up the market for young users and deepen the layout of game products and teaching software.
After the acquisition, Minecraft did indeed rely on Microsoft’s “network” to cooperate with a number of organizations to use educational products to do a lot of interesting things. For example, it collaborated with WWF World Wildlife Fund to create a biodiversity course, and also cooperated with NASA to allow students to explore the International Space Station in the game.
Facing with the fierce children’s programming in recent years, Microsoft and code.org launched “One Hour Programming”, Minecraft is the main programming tool, players can use programming in the game to complete the bridge through the magma, control circuit And other tasks.
Let the children choose to play this or look at ordinary textbooks, it is not difficult to imagine who can catch the child’s heart. Most children are supposed to play games, it is better to learn while playing, and most parents had intended to send their children to programming cram school, it is better to learn by playing games at home.
Roblox: Teaching without self-teaching programming
In terms of programming, the strong confrontation with Minecraft is Roblox, which has gradually become popular in China recently. Data shows that it has 100 million monthly active users worldwide, surpassing Minecraft’s 91 million.
In fact, Roblox was established as early as 2006, but in recent years, its income performance has been relatively good before it gradually entered the public eye.
The main user group is young people under the age of 13, and the functions on the platform can be used in packagesLuo Wanxiang to describe. In this virtual world, children can customize their avatars, participate in off-road challenges, build dream roller coasters, and dive.
For parents, children are not just playing around, but also learning to code.
The educational version of Roblox has a stable style of play: use this magical world to make children interested in programming in elementary school, and many users will download Roblox Studio to publish their own game experience in junior high school.
The work of many people in high school has become very mature and even can receive Roblox cash rewards. Yes, yes, Roblox spent $30 million last year to reward the best creators.
Roblox understands the core of programming education, that is, it does not matter which language you learn how to learn, because the process is boring, but focuses on “what you can create”, and gives each programming The potential of learners to become content creators.
The focus on UGC (user-created content) also helps it create a healthy gaming community ecology.
Because excellent players will feed the game itself, satisfying the characteristics of young people who love creating and sharing will help increase stickiness and attract new players to join. Roblox has strong social attributes, many people build with classmates and friends game.
During the epidemic, in order to cater to the needs of online teaching, Roblox launched a series of lectures to teach teachers how to use the game to teach lessons, and also released many outlines to save teachers the trouble of preparing lessons.
In May of last year, Roblox joined Tencent and began to enter China with the name “Roblex”.
Tencent also participated in its 150 million G round of financing in February this year, which also represents Tencent’s first investment in programming education. The two will cooperate to launch a series of youth-oriented education projects, such as STEM summer camps and gamification teaching courses in elementary and middle schools, etc., and look forward to the Chinese “Houlang” who will shine in Roblox games.
On the same track, NetEase has a similar style of play. In 2018, he obtained the exclusive official agency rights of the well-known American programming game CodeCombat in China’s public school market and online personal user market, and debuted with the name “Geek War Record”, which was the first shot of domestic gamification education.
The game adopts the plot of heroes defeating monsters to seize gems. Players use codes to control the protagonist. The game supports four programming languages. As the level upgrades, the difficulty of programming becomes higher. It is said that the skills of players who pass the customs successfully can reach the level of American AP programming.
Programming is becoming the trend of the world from the beginning of dolls, but compared with the traditional “Language, English, Materialization, History, and Land Administration”, teachers and teaching materials are very lacking. Game aids from technology companies are a surprise. Tencent has played a similar role with NetEase, and the games from the local community will be more likely.
Second, play while learning: all-round learning is fun
Why do students prefer gamification to learning, just for fun? Why is it important to be educated and educated?The combination of learning and playing has many potential advantages.
Curiosity drives natural learning
Curiosity is the main motivation for learning. When you are very interested in a thing, you will often explore it. For teaching, putting knowledge into the game allows students to explore by themselves, rather than learning from books. It’s much more interesting and natural. You have already learned knowledge when you can’t tell whether you are playing or learning.
This is especially useful for subjects such as chemistry and physics. For example, in Minecraft, there will be challenges for players to find ways to fly pigs. This challenge can be completed by creating a chemical element to create a balloon and attach it to the pig. This method of remembering the chemical process is much more effective than rote memorizing the chemical periodic table of elements.
The same is true for programming and other skills. The learning process no longer means boring memory and repetition. But it represents the possibility of self-exploration and creation, and playing becomes the best teacher.
Gamification is more effective for younger children because their attention span is shorter and games are more interactive than books.
The Norwegian gamified learning platform Kahoot!, which has recently reached $28 million, has won 19 million active accounts with a simple game concept.
Teachers can turn their investigation of knowledge into vivid “brainstorming” intelligence quizzes, and the change from test paper to game platform alone is enough to make students interested enough to study hard.
And gamification education is not just the prerogative of children’s education. 87% of the top 500 universities in the world and 97% of the top 500 companies are also in Kahoot! to strengthen the mastery of professional knowledge and education products. The line is also very exciting.
“Practical” skill improvement
When we talk about education, we are talking about not only book knowledge, but also skills that can make us successful in real life, such as critical thinking, problem solving, and frustration resistance. It is a great carrier to enhance these skill points.
Minecraft, for example, often requires players to solve a complex problem. During this process, students must think about how to collect clues step by step and learn to measure the trade-off resources.
With the purpose of breaking through the barriers, failure does not mean a big blow, but it makes people more motivated to start from scratch, and they are more willing to try to take risks. This is something that cannot be taught in ordinary classrooms, but it is necessary as an entrepreneur or entrepreneur.
With the development of science and technology, many jobs that humans can do are replaced by machines, and future education will focus more on the cultivation of “soft power.”
It is difficult to teach skills such as “patience”, “empathy” and “teamwork” in normal classrooms that cannot be tested with scores, but students often need to communicate with teammates in the game, learn to listen and express themselves Appeal, naturally have mastered these qualities.
Three, game education: it is the outlet is more challenging
In addition to the seamless connection between games and education itself, using games to open education lines is also a direction that many startups can break through.
Observing today’s online education track, there are many fields from core courses to quality education, but most of them still basically use online courses docking and live broadcast.
Currently, companies that do gamification education in China also adopt a more superficial “gamification” model, such as standings, challenges, and hurdles. They do not really get how the process of acquiring knowledge is integrated into fun, which will be compared in the short term. Attracting users but having difficulty maintaining stickiness.
On the contrary, the value of education lines of some game companies, or products that have no educational abacus at all, have been tapped and become a textbook-like case.
Because their core is indeed “playing”, education has become an accidental harvest of drunkards not intending to drink.
In the future, it is the education industry that really needs to reclaim gamified education, because they need more fun to fight for it.
The Metaari report shows that the global educational game market will grow rapidly at a compound growth rate of 33.2% by 2024, and will reach US$24 billion in 2024, which is even greater than the overall game market growth. The players will fight for the shot.
Gamification education should not only be C-education, but should start with the user’s cognitive psychology.
In the game, there are ups and downs in the plot, the network effect is important in socializing, creativity is encouraged, the user’s psychological control and satisfaction are emphasized, and the seamless connection between learning and playing is emphasized for user growth. And sticky points.
At present, mature products like this are rare, which means that there are still large vacancies waiting to be filled.
Learning and creating are always a simple and happy thing. Books are tools and technology is also a tool. Gamification of education is not a groundbreaking innovation, but it is also a process of reversing the “anti-human nature” of traditional education.
No matter which era, education is an evergreen circuit, and capital will always follow, but the carrier and model will be more natural and interesting.
But what is certain is that in the future, there will be less template questions about “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and more inspiration from “what do you want to do?”, so that each of us can continue to learn , In playing middle school, learn to play old to old.
>
This article comes from the public number:Silicon Rabbit Race (ID: sv_race) , author: Lexie