You have probably figured out by now that Denki doesn’t subscribe to the ‘games are evil’ viewpoint. Games can be useful – as well as fun.  Think of the number of kids you know who play games.  Now think of the sheer amount of information they know about those games.  OK, in some cases it’s the muzzle velocity of a machine gun or brake horsepower of a modified car, but players in general will absorb information while they play and learn new skills as they progress through a game.

If you extend this beyond the admittedly narrow confines of the mainstream console releases, you can make a case that games can be fabulous ways to teach skills and impart information, in a way that players can relate to.

So it’s great to see more details on Quest to Learn emerging in the press. Quest to Learn is a new school in Manhattan (where else?) in which the students use games and game technology for all of their classes.

It sounds incredible:

This year’s 72-student class is split into four groups that rotate through five courses during the day: Codeworlds (math/English), Being, Space and Place (social studies/English), The Way Things Work (math/science), Sports for the Mind (game design), and Wellness (health/PE). Instead of slogging through problem sets, students learn collaboratively in group projects that require an understanding of subjects in the New York State curriculum. The school’s model draws on 30 years of research showing that people learn best when they’re in a social context that puts new knowledge to use. Kids learn more by, say, pretending to be Spartan spies gathering intel on Athens than by memorizing facts about ancient Greece.

While some parents – and many mainstream journalists – will throw up their hands in horror at the very notion of games being used to ‘educate’ there are many projects around the world which have shown that even commercially available games can be used within the classroom in different ways.

While Scotland doesn’t have anything like Quest to Learn quite yet, it does have Learning & Teaching Scotland, an organisation which has devoted a lot of time and resources to the notion of using games educationally.

Denki’s been involved in a number of projects looking at educational gaming over the last ten years, and although it will be a few years before we see the real results from Quest to Learn, we’re delighted to see this latest high profile project get off the ground.

-Brian (@flackboy)