slides as GBL

My toddler loves slides.  Slides operate on gravity.  Ergo...my toddler now understands gravity?

Clearly there's a step missing.

I think this may be a problem with some forms of game-based learning: we tend to assume that the player (or student) is learning what we intend them to learn form the game.  We make the same mistake with reading: we assign a text such as a work of fiction, or a newspaper article and we assume that the student can understand more than just the words on the page, that he or she can grasp the idea or the message being conveyed.  But that might be too much of an assumption.  It takes skill and training to read texts properly, to understand concepts like metaphor and foreshadowing, or the differences between fact, bias and opinion.  Why should we assume any differently with games?

Ian Bogost uses the term "procedural literacy" to describe the ability to understand how games represent systems. This, I believe, must be taught.  Once the learner understands how games represent systems, then they can use and even design games to learn.  Just as we learn to read so that we can read to learn, we need to learn games so that we can use games to learn.

I would like my toddler to one day think about why you go down on slides (and why climbing up them is so hard) and then to extrapolate that idea to swings, and then to planets in motion.  Then, maybe, she'll be ready to design her own jungle gym.