WIRED Will Wright Gaming and Learning

While at the GDC, Mark Oehlert showed me the latest edition of WIRED with Will Wright. The next day I heard Will give his keynote then I bought it and read it myself. What a great issue for the learning community. Lots of good stuff. I was ready to blog it, then I caught up on my blog reader and noticed this from Dave Warlick on Video Games commenting about the Will Wright issue of WIRED. So I'm late to the party. But the best story is online here called Dream Machines. I've been excited about the possibilities of games as much as the rest of you but Will does a great job of putting it into words. Here are the money lines for learning...

"As children, we spend much of our time in imaginary worlds, substituting toys and make-believe for the real surroundings that we are just beginning to explore and understand. As we play, we learn. And as we grow, our play gets more complicated. We add rules and goals. The result is something we call games."

"It turns out that we don't use computers to enhance our math skills - we use them to expand our people skills."

I'm so tired of the negative publicity that games get in the mainstream media that I'm going to do a workshop at my children's school for parents on Games and Learning. I don't expect to change too many minds, but maybe enlighten a few. The WIRED mag articles give great ammunition, and much of the blogosphere, books, and research should suffice.

Any ideas from you all in the education world would be greatly appreciated.