Futurist and tech guru Dan Burres once observed that to play the average video game like Halo or Sonic the Hedgehog, a child must learn and master no fewer than 70 new rules or skills. These 70 skills do not increase the player’s probability of success in the game, rather these 70 skills are the bare minimum to negotiate the first level of the game.
Dan also pointed out that in this immersive simulation or virtual reality environment, the child is monitoring no fewer than 100 individual incoming data streams from 360 degrees in all three planes of three-dimensional space (X, Y, and Z axes). In addition, newer generations of these gaming systems provide text, audio and video conferencing, allowing players to collaborate in real time with people not only within their country but over the Internet in other countries.
These contributions are not limited by language differences. As a result, in order to work collaboratively within a given group and have that group work collaboratively with other groups, players must learn a new language, either a unique one for the game or one used in common by all players within the game. his team.
Education xBox:
But what does this have to do with education or business process improvement?
What if the highly publicized No Child Left Behind curriculum were handed out to video game programmers and used as the rules, processes, and systems of a series of adventure role-playing games?
What if the same level of mastery of school skills were required to be successful at the various levels of these games?
It is estimated that the entire K-8 educational curriculum will be learned and mastered in a short period of two and a half years!
Additionally, the remaining four years of high school would be completed in 18 months. Since this sophistication of video games requires a certain level of reading and fine motor skills, students would not be ready to begin such a program until the age of seven or eight (third grade). Therefore, these students would complete high school at the end of the seventh grade.
Military and civilian applications of immersion simulation and virtual reality training have found that the application and retention of information and learned skills maintain more than 90% memory and more than 90% proficiency in real-world applications. This means that students learning in an immersive / virtual reality simulation environment will not only master their K-12 education, but will remember it with over 90% accuracy and apply it with over 90% proficiency. This beats even the best educational programs anywhere in the world by more than a two-to-one margin.
Given this level of retention and proficiency, these seventh graders could augment their education with the first two years of college (liberal arts studies) that they would complete again within a year. A full education could be further augmented with Music and Literature, which of course would be part of the immersion simulation rather than separate courses, paying little or no additional time to the program.
In such an augmented technology education, by the time the average child graduates from high school and enters adolescence, they would have completed the equivalent of two years of college in a liberal arts program, again with a higher master’s level. 90% or more. in collegiate terms, a Magna Cum Laude level of experience.
Toaster or Technology:
The problem with the application of this model within our current educational system is that for a pre-adolescent or adolescent, the xBox 360, PlayStation 3 or a similar device is not technology, rather it is a tool similar to a toaster. Yet for those of us providing education, whether in the graduate or high school setting, this same device still represents significant technology with “cutting edge graphics” and “incredible speed.” For those of us who grew up in the Pong and Atari generation, the xBox 360 and PlayStation 3 were not only unimaginable, but had they existed in our teens, they would have cost tens of millions of dollars and would be called “supercomputers.”
The culture clash between today’s educators and the educational technology represented by the xBox 360 and PlayStation 3 is a gulf almost too great to forge.
Businesses can lead the way:
Perhaps the dripping effect is more easily accepted. Rather than turning the modern classroom into an educational video arcade, what if currently available technologies, such as xBox 360, PlayStation 3, or even Second Life, were applied to immersive simulation employee training?
Role playing games designed around literary works, movies or even fantasy could be modified or even built from scratch to incorporate the new skills and processes needed in the business environment or even in a manufactured environment. Fire safety, workplace safety, disaster preparedness, disaster response, or even such mundane activities as packing for trips, preparing for a doctor’s visit, or maintaining your own health could all be incorporated into the mythical world of virtual reality role-playing games.
Today’s Dungeon Masters could draw on vast bodies of knowledge and work cooperatively with professional organizations and coaches, academic institutions, and advocacy groups to ensure that evidence-based processes are incorporated into games by enabling games. uphold not just the laws of physics, but the laws of business, medicine, and even real-world legal considerations.
Imagine entering Second Life online and “volunteering” at a hospital responding to an earthquake (or Godzilla attack). Nurses, physicians, administrators, lab technicians, X-ray technologists, healthcare providers, and professionals of all stripes could practice their cooperation, collaboration, policies, and even procedures in this virtual space until these skills became second nature in Second. Life.
When an actual event occurred, the same individuals who were trained in the immersive simulation / virtual reality environment would discover that they apply these new skills with military precision and virtual reality realism. Life will really imitate art.
Let the games begin:
So what would it take to put theory into practice?
The will to do it!
The technology exists. There are programming algorithms. There are procedures and best practices in every industry that could benefit from immersion simulation / virtual reality training. The only thing missing is a simple collaboration between programmers who are masters of this new world and professionals who are masters of both new and old knowledge.
Perhaps like in the video game Cameo, these modern day digital alchemists can join the wizards of ancient wisdom and forge a new world for all.