Us voces can translate a little Nipponese but not quite enough to read the article behind this blog’s post—but the story still intrigues us.
It looks like Namco Bandai—a company that we love simply from all the enjoyment they’ve brought us—is looking into educating children using a translation from the digital world of video games into the analog world of textbooks.
It sounds like Namco Bandai is layering a choose-your-own adventure into the basic work/textbooks most students use in elementary school. Students follow an RPG storyline by, say, solving math problems and each right answer nets them a key. Scoring enough keys wins the student some kind of prize — but it’s not clear if the prize is contained within the book or something physical the teacher distributes. It could be pretty entertaining edutainment if it’s not too easy to cheat the game like you can with most choose-your-own adventures.
We also loved Choose Your Own Adventure books, but never thought about how they might be used for education and learning. Certainly not the typical textbook, but there’s a good amount of ground that could be covered. For children in grade school this might actually prove to be a worthwhile motivator adding fun, goals, and education together into some real book-level “edutainment.”
Link, via GamePro.
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