Welcome to NCS-Tech!

Good morning all,

Please accept my apologies for not posting much in the last few days – the last weeks of school are always hectic, but this year things seem to have been even crazier! Making matters worse, I’ve got two or three supermassive blog posts in my drafts folder, and until I churn them out, I’m going to be even more distracted!

But I digress … on to today’s post!

The inexorable march of gaming into education continues with this latest announcement from the Florida Virtual School (FLVS). “Conspiracy Code” is a game-based high school history course cleverly utilizing an immersive 3D virtual world. Available as a free download (PC only – sorry Mac!) the premise:

“High School students will develop a deep understanding of American History as they control Eddie and Libby; fictional characters in an espionage-themed adventure set in the fictional, near-future metropolis of Coverton City. In the game – or course – students must build their knowledge of American History in order to stop a vast conspiracy that is threatening to erase and change the course of history.”

Certainly sounds engaging. But what will they actually DO?

“Students test their knowledge during in-game challenges, engage in student-to-student collaborations and discussions, exchange information with peers (similar to group projects), and eventually use their knowledge to complete culminating mission assessments, each step eliciting a higher-order analysis of the material.”

This is no first-person shoot-em-up with a candy-coated history theme that might be fun to “play” in a computer lab for a couple of class periods; in fact, reading the course overview, one gets a sense of the massive scale behind this application, and the amount of time (online, offline, in school and at home) that will be necessary to finish it. Heavily influenced by research by FLVS subject-matter experts and researchers from the University of Central Florida, this is serious business, “hard fun” as Seymour Papert would say, though the people best suited to make THAT judgement are kids that actually play this game. Since it was just announced, we don’t have a ready supply of those people yet, so, we’ll have to wait!

What I find most interesting about this is that the game relies heavily on “real world” research and face to face collaboration; the “simulation” is merely an environment where that work can be assembled and leveraged, and, presumably, where connections can be formed, inferences can be made, and genuine learning can occur.

Pretty cool stuff. Might be ideal for a summer course on history or an after-school club for those schools not yet ready to integrate something like this into their curriculum, but who knows? How about an experimental elective? I’ve seen the course lists at my local high school; they do some pretty creative offerings. Why not design a history elective around this program? What have they got to lose?

Hope this helps,

-kj-