Technology & Learning - October 2007 - (Page 32)

tweens that focuses on science and math concepts. Created in 1999, it currently has 2.77 million registered users. Since 70 percent of Whyville users are girls, the site, in conjunction with the University of Texas, has created a range of activities around healthy eating and making better choices. (A recent study by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association indicates most teenage girls skip breakfast often and lack daily required doses of calcium.) One of Whyville’s nutrition activities involves “feeding” your avatar (online character) a daily balanced diet. Players can choose from a database that has extremely detailed nutritional information on 500 core foods. More than 125,000 Whyvillians have been playing this game for several months. Whyville has successfully engaged learners by injecting fun and social status into the game: if you don’t eat enough calcium your avatar shows up swaddled in bandages; drink too much caffeine and your eyes gog- Food for Thought: Whyville helps students learn about nutrition. gle out; avoid fruits and vegetables and you get scurvy. Part of the fun is deliberately getting your avatar ill and then reestablishing health. Because much of the rest of the game involves social interaction, players pay a lot of attention to their avatar’s appearance. Whyville has tapped tweens’ interest in socializing and status to engage them with serious science. It’s also a myth that video games are all about instant gratification. The most popular video games of all time are actually extremely complex puzzles, and they succeed because deep and difficult learning is fun in itself (the Zelda series, Myst, and Prince of Persia by Nintendo, Cyan, and Ubisoft, respectively, are just a Civilization players learn that a society is a large-scale puzzle of shifting resource allocation. few examples). “You’ll often hear video games included in the list of debased instant gratifications that abound in our culture, right up there with raunchy music videos and fast food,” says Steven Johnson in his 2005 book Everything Bad Is Good for You. “But compared to most forms of popular entertainment, games turn out to be all about delayed gratification—sometimes so long delayed that you wonder if the gratification is ever going to show.” In Civilization, players have to guide their particular civilization through several historical eras and balance a wide range of priorities to be successful. Completing a game can take several weeks, with players encountering different challenges along the way. For example, if you build temples and schools your civilization will innovate faster than your neighbor’s. You can also win territory through cultural supremacy, but if you don’t build enough military units, more bellicose countries will quickly overrun you. Conversely, if you invest everything in the military your innovation will lag—you definitely don’t want to be shouldering muskets while your neighbors are discovering aircraft. The game is essentially a largescale, long-term puzzle of constantly shifting resource allocation. In World of Warcraft, players develop specialized professions that allow them to make materials they can use or sell to other players. Leatherworking, mining, alchemy, and cooking are just a few examples. It takes 32 | www.techlearning.com http://www.techlearning.com

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Technology & Learning - October 2007 Editor’s Desk News & Trends Product Guide Reviews How Fast Is Fast Enough? Cover Story: Career Education in the Digital Age Getting It Wrong Higher Ed Point of View How To Bottom Line What’s New Emerging Tech

Technology & Learning - October 2007

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