What Would a State of the Art Instructional Video Game Look Like?

J.P. Gee has an interesting article (free registration required) in a recent issue of Innovate.

Unfortunately, our schools are still locked in endless and pointless battles between "traditionalism" and "progressivism," between lecture-style teaching and immersion learning, as if these were the only two alternatives. In contrast, given that good commercial games have been so successful in attracting and maintaining learners, it is clear that they appear to have solved this central paradox of learning. This is in large part because good commercial games are based on good theories of learning.

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As one masters Full Spectrum Warrior through activity supported by distributed knowledge (i.e., the knowledge built into the virtual soldiers), many aspects of military professionalism come to life. All sorts of arcane words and information that would be hard to retain through rote drill become part of one's arsenal, tools through which activity is accomplished and experience understood. For example, I now know what "bounding" means in military practice, how it is connected to military values, and what role it plays tactically in achieving military goals. A mere dictionary definition could not begin to compete with mine.