FIRST pairs students with volunteer engineers, scientists, and machinists. They work together to build a remote control device (robot) to play a game. They have about six weeks to come up with a concept, prove it, build it, program it, and ship it. The robots weigh up to 145lbs and are typically 30″x36″x60″, though the game and size requirements change from year to year. Driving one is like playing a video game in real life.

They play the game in teams of three robots at local competitions. The competitions are loud and exciting, it is like being at a sporting event. In fact we use sports venues for Regionals and the Championship has been held for the past few years in the Geogia Dome.

Last year we had about 1500 teams competing in 42 Regional competitions across the US and in Brazil, Canada, and Israel. The average team has 20 students, but they range in size from four to over 100.

It is fun
It is science-based
It is hands-on
It shows students how to do engineering
It shows student THEY can be engineers
There are almost $9M in scholarships for the participants
and did I mention it is fun?

More details on their website http://www.usfirst.org

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Hands on? Not so much…

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Just a hunch, Adios, but knowing our culture these days, I have a feeling what they will get swept up in is the game.

I used to play a Weather game, and I don’t remember much at all about weather. I remember the funny character and giving the crocodile a candy bar to keep him busy, but no weather at all. I predict the “science video game” will be the same way.

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The world is not textbook-based. THE premier way of teaching, for example, physics, is not by reading it in a text book, but by the “modeling” curriculum. Modeling Physics The emphasis is on observing, building models, and applying those models, and it is a very powerful way to achieve deep understanding – deeper than most textbooks can possibly cover.

It is more difficult to do well than simply following along a text book, but those who use it mostly foreswear texts, or use them only in a supplemental way, after they have developed the basic models.

As for video games, I had the opportunity last fall to do a week of observation of two master teachers. They aren’t doctrinaire in their use of the modeling curriculum, including more direct instruction methods at the beginning of each unit, for example.

Anyway, these two teachers have developed literally hundreds of lab activities for their students – no two lab groups in any unit are doing the same activity. I was surprised that some of the units include use of videogames.

For example, they have students analyze the motion of characters in maze-like games, to develop concepts of distance versus displacement, and use of vectors. Other video games required the students to estimate distances based on something like the height of a character, and then use frame-by-frame analysis to determine whether, or how realistically, accelaration while falling is built into the game world.

The physics that are built into many of the newer video games are indeed very richly detailed, including surface behaviour, light and optical ray tracing, mass, accelaration, force and on and on.

Less detailed “games” are very effective in teaching particular concepts. There are very good “physlets” – Java-based applications – some of which feel a bit like a video game. All require some direction by the teacher in order to be really useful.

When you recall that what we are doing in physics really is just building a very detailed model of the world, using mathematical tools, it makes sense that video games set in simplified model worlds have a place in visualizing, learning, and applying, science.

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If done right, it will be beneficial, if done poorly it will not.

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This is the goal of any educator. If the “thing” the student gets “swept up in” is the science and not the game, then it will translate into books, labs, field studies, whatever.

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Who says higher education is going to remain textbook-based? The dumbing down of education has not been constrained to K-12.

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Given my experience with smart kids and computers, they get enough game playing at home. A lot of science is hands-on and taking another aspect of their education and making it less kinetic, is problematic and short sighted.

Science should be about exploring the world, not observing it through a screen and someone else’s experience.

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Yesterday our family watched a DVD of Mythbusters (to celebrate Fathers Day – my husband really loves that series). We both commented on how good a tool it could be to get kids interested in science, seeing how the Mythbusters crew has to take into account the various variables that could be affecting their results, providing a control group to compare with, looking for various ways to approach the same question, etc.

There’s no reason why it has to be a choice between traditional study and use of fun new technology – they both have their place.

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