(2017-12-06) Levine Making Our Schoolssuperbetter With Gbl

Michael Levine: Making Our Schools "SuperBetter" With game-based learning (GBL). The National Research Council's important report on games and simulations for science learning (Honey & Hilton, 2011) found that simulations were a very effective tool in promoting academic knowledge and inquiry skills.

We need to also--as Jane McGonigal argues--greatly expand our focus on key non-cognitive skills such as tenacity (mental resilience) and empathy (social resilience) which may mean more in helping children succeed now than ever before.

In a recent Cooney Center survey on teaching with games, we found that a large majority of educators report that games help students learn at a different rate and improve team skills. But the emphasis on assessments and standardized testing may be a considerable barrier.

Despite the success of some GBL products and services (such as Filament Games, MangaHigh and E-Line Media, the K-12 institutional marketplace is a notoriously tough nut to crack.

As a recent report "Games for a Digital Age," found barriers to GBL in education include:

To help overcome these barriers, the Cooney Center has convened the Games and Learning Publishing Council (GLPC).

the site gamesandlearning.org, that will assembles authoritative, highly accessible information for investors and developers.