Evil virus from hell then sinus infection have laid me low. Hence severe lack of bloggage (and missing the 9 year anniversary of my first ever blog post – blimey!). And so the SXSW write-up continues!

One of my favourite panels of SXSWi09 was What Can We Learn From Games?, with Henry Jenkins, James Gee and Warren Spector talking about about game design, learning theories, collective intelligence, transmedia entertainment, and the value of play in a participatory culture – and they didn’t disappoint. Here are a couple of my highlights:

Games as a gateway drug

A love of learning is innate to human nature – games tap into our fundamental human love of learning. Games provide a space for problem solving – presenting a way to understand different ways of approaching the same problem.

The Sims, for example, teaches the practical application of foresight and thinking ahead in a far more engaging way than theory-based life-skills lessons can ever teach. Henry Jenkins recounted the tale of his son learning about how to manage a budget by playing the Sims. He learned the hard way by running out of money too early, learning a valuable life lesson through experience – without actually having to make the same mistake in real life!

The value of gaming for education is incredible – there are some fantastic examples, but it’s equally stunning that the principles of gaming aren’t being taken advantage of more frequently.

The terrific work that Alice Taylor and Matt Locke are doing at Channel 4 is a shining example of using gaming as a gateway drug to learning. At the start of 2008, Channel 4 Education took the unprecedented step of shifting its entire £6m commissioning budget from TV to online and cross-platform projects, in a bid to re-connect with its teenage audience. They see gaming as crucial to engage 14-19s in learning on their terms – where projects like Routes engage teenagers in the world of genetics and bio-ethics far more richly (and effectively) than a biology lesson ever could.

And it’s great to see government funding for educational gaming – such as the DEFRA-funded Operation Climate Control by Red Redemption, educating teens about environmental issues through play.

And fantastic initiatives like Game Based Learning bring together the best minds to push the agenda for gaming as a key educational tool.

Interactive narrative is not story telling. It’s about letting you play. That way and see the consequences. It’s not about telling you how the world is, it’s about giving you a setting & letting you play things out. That’s how you learn.

So why is gaming so often seen as something we should keep kids away from, when there’s such potential in the power of play for learning?

Approaches to problem solving: gaming vs traditional educational framework

Our school system primarily recognises autonomous problem solving as valid – assignments and exams are solitary activities, where collaborative problem solving is seen as cheating. Gaming, on the other hand, encourages collaboration – which is in many ways much more akin to real life problem solving.

Games have taught a generation that failure is not bad and collaboration is not cheating.

Much of gameplay is about a collaborative approach to strategic problem solving – not about sharing the answers. So why, when being a team-player is so highly valued in the real world, does so much of our approach to learning penalise collaboration?