Computer games as liberal arts?

Educators who teach kids to make their own video games are on education's cutting edge.
By David Kirkpatrick, senior editor

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/06/technology/games_change.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008060906


(Fortune) -- Though many adults imagine the frightening Grand Theft Auto when they think of video games, kids appear to be subtler thinkers on the subject. Not only do many of them intuitively realize that games can embody any values and be on any subject, many want to make games themselves.

That was my big takeaway from the fourth annual Games For Change conference held in New York. I moderated a session there on Youth-Created Games for Change, something I confess I knew next to nothing about before this week.

Educators around the country are recognizing that it isn't intrinsically bad that kids want to spend so much time staring at a screen playing video games. Instead of demonizing them for doing so, they're redirecting the kids' attention to more beneficial things on the screen - creating games that help kids learn. The conference highlighted a dizzying array of games on environmental, political, scientific, human rights and other topics. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gave the event's closing keynote, in which she described a computer game she is helping create to teach students about the court system.

But some educators are going a step further, teaching kids to make the games themselves. It turns out to be perhaps the ultimate form of liberal arts. In order to create a computer game you have to think about the content. You have to write a script. The programming involves logic, math and science. And to understand how you distribute a game you have to get into issues of marketing, sociology, and Internet culture. Panelist Rafael Fajardo, a professor at the University of Denver, says that his program, which teaches teachers how to teach kids to make games, is working to "change the culture of education." The National Science Foundation has contributed funding.