I went to an AERA 2006 session on Cultural Historical Activity Theory, and saw a presentation by Gail Richardson on “Measure Up” — a 120 hour Davydovian (student of Vygotsky) -style math curriculum. She’s in the Steinhardt School of Education (NYU) Russian Math Curriculum and works in New Jersey.
Anyway, as she was talking about how it was difficult to fit a 120 hour curriculum into an after school format, but how effective even 6 hours were, I thought about the 200+ hours I spent the first half of this semester playing video games. And imagined a Nintendo DS “Brain Game” version of a Vygotskian math curriculum. Granted, we all deride “Math Blaster” but that’s hardly Vygotskian. Since I’ve been socialized to do things with a clear and useful purpose, I’ve had serious difficulty entering into the ‘entertainment’ mindset of video games. My WoW experience was successful for as long as it was, largely because it was an inquiry-based experience with the purpose of understanding what it was like to play, and what are the learning principles of it? But it’s not specifically applying to my dissertation, so I can’t justify continuing.
But what of a video game that had specified goals? Would it be less entertaining? Maybe for ‘kids these days’ but probably not for me, because I find great entertainment in learning new stuff — if it’s engaging enough. I’d buy a 100 hour “learn to play piano” game (Garageband?) if it were even half as engaging as WoW, and a 120 hour math game if it were fun and made sense to me. It’s like eating cereal that’s good for me — unless it really sucks, I’ll eat it and feel good about myself.
- (“Measure Up” 120hour course)
- Elkonin-Davydov Mathematics curriculum
- Pre-numeric Vygotskian
- Concepts of Quantity, equality, transitivity
- (Russian) Multiplicative Learning = content x tool x reality
- (American) Additive Learning = content + tool + reality
- content is quantities — use everyday objects, instead of numbers
- removes the divide between whole numbers and real numbers
- length is not a measurement, it’s a quantity.
- (very cool)
