Edutainment (was Re: Open Book)

[Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

Robert Hopcroft wrote:
> 
> > I'd like to see us get
> > into home use "edutainment" software, but that's also for the future.
> > So, I agree with you that we shouldn't restrict our purview to just
> > pre-college education, but I think that for now that's a good place to
> > use our limited resources.
> 
> Doug, Do you want me to collect what information there is in the
> archives on "edutainment" software and put it on an edutainment web
> page. I noticed Oregon Trail and Carmen SanDiego memtioned. I'm not
> familiar with these programs. What exactly do they do? Do they come on a
> CD? 

Oregon Trail and it's follow-up Amazon Trail put the user in the
position of making decisions about how to accomplish a specific goal. 
They're kind of like adventure games, but based on historical events. 
In Oregon Trail, for example, the user is leading a wagon train from St.
Louis to Portland (I may be misremembering some of these details). 
Along the way he or she will have to figure out how to deal with
disease, dwindling resources, indians, etc.  For each of these decisions
there's information to help the user understand the nature of the
problem and to make reasonable decisions.  that information is the
educational portion of the "edutainment."

In the Carmen SanDiego series, Carmen is an international criminal who
the user must apprehend.  Depending on the program, Carmen may be
somewhere in the US, somewhere in the world, somewhere in time, etc. 
There are tantalizing clues as to where Carmen has gone that the user
must learn more about the specific locale (US, world, time, etc.) to
understand properly.

The games in these series come on CD-ROM, although there may have been
early versions that came on floppies.

> What about a nature walk. I can remember when I was a kid and going
> on a walk and having various things in nature pointed out.
[snipped a description of a fascinating experiment]
> Anyway would something like this fit into the edutainment picture.
> One could do sound tracks in any language and perhaps, people would send
> clips from around the world.Anyway another thought.
> 
It easily could.  It would have to be structured in some way that user
decisions influence the activity.  If it's a straight narrative, kids
will tire of it rapidly.  I've noticed that my son much prefers
something he has some control over rather than just, "Click here to
learn more about Triceratops."  I'm not sure how to structure such a
nature walk to provide that.  Perhaps as a nature scavenger hunt, where
the user has to find and collect facts about various plants and animals
to win the game.

-- 
Doug Loss                 The difference between the right word and
Data Network Coordinator  the almost right word is the difference
Bloomsburg University     between lightning and a lightning bug.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain