Forbes – Jordan Shapiro
“Third graders played for just 10 minutes per day, 3 days a week, for four weeks. The comparison group’s class received the same materials and the same instruction, but didn’t play the game. The result of playing was a staggering 20.5% improvement after just two hours of self-guided play. Of course, it probably won’t work with just any game. And the hard part is figuring out which games to use, especially considering today’s exploding market for learning games. Recently, I spent about an hour browsing the Google Play for Education Store. It was the first time I really looked at it carefully and I was not impressed. There was no way to really evaluate whether or not a game will help my kids learn anything. Likewise, it is extremely difficult to choose learning apps from Apple’s iOS Appstore. Hyper-curated in order to facilitate sales, both stores are full of big claims that play on both our naïve belief that computers will eventually be able to do everything and our incessant fears that our children need an academic head start.”(more)