How would you like to learn your entire high school curriculum by playing video games? Sounds like a dream come true, doesn't it? For 72 sixth-grade students in New York City, that dream is a reality. The Quest to Learn School is an experimental approach to learning that prepares students for high-tech careers by educating nearly entirely through video games.
- "This year’s 72-student class is split into four groups that rotate through five courses during the day: Codeworlds (math/English), Being, Space and Place (social studies/English), The Way Things Work (math/science), Sports for the Mind (game design), and Wellness (health/PE). Instead of slogging through problem sets, students learn collaboratively in group projects that require an understanding of subjects in the New York State curriculum. The school’s model draws on 30 years of research showing that people learn best when they’re in a social context that puts new knowledge to use. Kids learn more by, say, pretending to be Spartan spies gathering intel on Athens than by memorizing facts about ancient Greece."
The unique learning style keeps students engaged and combines current technology and media with the basic fundamentals of learning.
- "Most sixth-graders don’t expect to ever need to identify integers, but at Quest, it’s the key to a code-breaking game. In another class, when creatures called Troggles needed help moving heavy objects, the class made a video instructing how long a ramp they should build to minimize the force they needed to apply. “They’re picking concepts up as well as, if not better than, at other schools,” says Quest’s math and science teacher Ameer Mourad."
The students enter as sixth-graders and at the end of each school year will have to pass the standardized tests to keep the school open. Quest administrators hope for this current class to continue learning via video game through graduation, each year admitting a new class of sixth graders.
- “We need new ways to create a passion for learning,” says Gregg Betheil, a New York City Department of Education director who helped Quest’s application. “The planning has been extremely thoughtful. It seemed like a chance worth taking.”
Could this be the future of American education? We can only imagine what the wait list must be like!
via Popular Science
