Week 6 Using Simulations as a Starting Point for Constructing Meaningful Learning Games
Klopfer & Purushotma. (2012). Using Simulations as a Starting Point for Constructing Meaningful Learning Games
I believe using simulation and games as learning tools will result in deeper understanding of the particular topic among students. Â Simulations truly give the opportunity to students to implement to the events. The authors of the article especially support using simulation for the science education. âHow anybody can learn science from these books, I donât know, because itâs not science. (Feynman 1985 , 297â298) However, simulations are situated learning environments. They can apply to any learning setting in a perfect way. For example me and my group friends designed a facebook on Second Life to teach cyberbullying, my other classmates designed a real traffic environment to teach traffic rules. So I agree simulations have very appropriate features for teaching and learning science. But they are as effective as in other sciences both in art and social sciences.
Also, I do like the way how the importance of simulation is reflected in the article. From the very first story, saying that knowing names of the things does not give you any information to you about this particular object. We should go deeper and learn what we need. I do love this quote from the article," History needs to teach students how to analyze causal relations, not just names and dates. Foreign language students need to be able to communicate comfortably and naturally in a foreign culture, not simply describe grammar rules. All disciplines need to teach how to work as teams and to create new solutions, not how to regurgitate answers.(p.604)" Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
Not to forget this inspiring story, I will copy it here.
" The next day, Monday, we were playing in the fields and this boy said to me, âSee that bird standing on the stump there? Whatâs the name of it?â
I said, âI havenât got the slightest ideaâ.
He said, âItâs a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesnât teach you much about science.â
I smiled to myself, because my father had already taught me that [the name] doesnât tell me anything about the bird. He taught me âSee that bird? Itâs a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany itâs called a Halsen fl ugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird â you only know
something about people; what they call that bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fl y, and fl ies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its wayâ, and so forth. There is a difference between the name of the thing and what goes on" (Feynman 1999 , 4).Â