H Duderstadt, New Tech Maven

I’ve written before of how I believe that video games offer a tremendous promise in education. I’m not talking about just “educational” games. Even mainstream products have great potential, especially those that give the player the ability to modify or build their own world. No game, in my opinion, does this better than Garry’s Mod.

The story behind this game is rather interesting. It is actually the product of several independent game developers, in particular Garry Newman, who were interested in creating something that would make it easy for players to modify and alter the characters and environments that are used in the popular Half-Life  games from Valve. As it itself is a modification of the original game,  it’s easy to see where it got the name Garry’s MOD. Originally, offered as a free option for those who are a owned Half Life (now Half Life 2),  is now a commercial product sold through Valve’s  Steam  gain management system. And only about $10, it’s a steal. There are also versions of it that will run on both PC or Macintosh, which is a plus.

Once installed, the player has the ability to work in any of the game environments that happened to be on their system. This, of course, is dependent upon which versions of Half Life 2 they have available, or several blank canvases,  one an open field with a concrete pad in the middle and another an open area in the middle of a giant city are available.    Players also have access to all the various characters and tools that are supported by the games. This includes all the vehicles, many of which are actually drivable.   Additionally, there is a large selection of tools that allow for an amazing variety of capabilities. Some allow you to weld various objects together, others support different types of hinges and connections, others give you greater control over the object or character you’re working with. Ultimately, the player is given access to everything they need to build an amazing collection of machines and objects that actually work. Add to this the fact that the laws of physics are fully functional in this environment and it’s easy to see how it earned the name “physics sandbox”.

Besides what comes with the game, there’s developed a very active community of independent developers who have built an amazing collection of extensions and options to the game. These range from characters and vehicles from games that are not produced by Valve, tools that support an amazing array of additional functionality, and even one set of extensions that allows for the creation of electrical circuits.

Garry’s Mod gives the player the ability to create easily all kinds of things That would be impossible for them to build in the real world. For example, try to build a walking cathedral in the world world or a Rube Goldberg machine that stands several football fields. For any child who shown an inclination to invention, Garry’s Mod will open the door to amazing possibilities. For more information, check out http://www.garrysmod.com/.  The purchase Garry’s Mod, you’ll first need to install Steam  on the machine which will run it. You can get this at http://store.steampowered.com/.

Kids in school love to complain about how boring so many subjects they have to study are.  “Why do I have to learn Trigonometry anyway???  It’s so BOOOORING!”   Or, “our physics teacher was going on and on about gravity and I just don’t get it.”

Yet, ask them about the latest video game they are playing and their whole mood will change as they start going on and on about how many zombies they were able to kill in Left 4 Dead, or how they built this amazing house in Sims 3 and wished they could really live there.   The two might appear to have nothing in common but you’d be suprised.

Take a look at the typical video game boys in particular like to play and you’ll find a real world complete with many of the same  properties a real world has, INCLUDING GRAVITY.  In fact, there is a game known as Garry’s Mod which is called a “physics sandbox”.  It’s basically an environment where the laws of physic exist and you can create things that are influence by this.  A walking house; a tank you can drive around, an whole army that you can control, even electrical circuits that control specific machines.  Imagine a virtual place where children can build anything they can imagine and then operate it as if it’s in the real world.  The potential of this program in an educational environment is immense.

The possibilities go on and on.  If this is something that excites you, the best place to start is read James Paul Gee’s work “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition: Revised and Updated Edition“

One of the things that we always hear about is how awful video games are.  We are reminded how the kids responsible for the Columbine massacre were avid video game players, video game addiction is spoken of grimly by noted child psychologists on network television, and on and on.

Now, I’m more than willing to admit that children can spend too much time playing games.  But, to say that video games are inherently “evil” is just not true.  In fact, there are many respected educators who feel video games are a key component of the future of learning.

Every year I attend a conference sponsored by the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison called the GLS Conference, for Games, Learning & Society (http://www.glsconference.org/2009/).  This event brings together teachers, professors, and game designers from all over the world who are doing very real and very exciting research into just how games can be integrated into learning.  And, I’m not just speaking of “educational games”, but main stream popular games.

I’m not going to delve deeply into this area, because it’s already been covered so well by many of the guest speakers at GLS .   Keep your eyes open for a new book coming out  by Deborah Todd, an experienced game designer, that promises to be an excellent insight into this.

Instead, in one key part of this blog, I want to focus less on existing games and how to use them in education, and more on how to make them and how very powerful tools to do this are bundled with many of the most popular games today including Civilization IV, Warcraft III, Grand Theft Auto 4, Unreal Tournament, Crysis, Fallout 3, World in Conflict, the Sims, Quake IV, and many of the games offered through the Steam system to mention only a few.

Beyond learning obvious skills such as design, computer programming, and 3D modeling, video game design also can also be a very powerful path to understanding less apparent subjects such as Math, Physics, Engineering, Architecture, Creative Writing, Drama, Music, Film-making, Business, and even Classics and Languages.  I’ll attempt to reveal these in articles as I progress through this part of the blog.

As a high school game design teacher, I know that many of my students probably won’t pursue careers as video game designers or programmers, but I also seek to use the subject as a means to make other subjects more relevant and interesting.  In the course of this blog, I hope to help you see this as well and discover how you can also use making video games as a powerful way to inspire and in develop interest and the tools you can provide to help.Video