"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
What exactly is edutainment?
A recently new term born in the early 1990s, it combines education and entertainment as one. From dictionary.com: The act of learning through a medium that both educates and entertains or any of various media, such as computer software, that educates and entertains.
Multimedia technologies are essential for providing edutainment that is both engaging and educating. Edutainment can be considered as a type of embedded learning that helps people to learn without them realizing, through the use of entertainment.
Why use edutainment?
In a traditional sense, the word "learn" seems to have lost its potency and in many cases the thought of learning triggers a sense of dry thought. The obvious example of why some people continue upward on the educational ladder whilst others do not. It also applies to those students that do continue upward but don’t learn as much as they could due to a lack of interest sometime in their course.
"Today's students will not tolerate being lectured to," says Harvey Dean founder of Synergistic Systems, Inc., in Pittsburgh, KS.
Students are more likely to learn something they’re interested and motivated to learn. There is also a change in cognitive style in how the younger generations learns and thinks about the world which I don’t believe for the most part is not always related to.
New generation – new ways of thinking…
Those of us “Nintendo children” born after 1970 and raised on video and computer games, Walkmans, the Internet, etc. – simply put, are different. This under-30 generation thinks, and sees the world, in ways entirely different from their parents.
According to Prensky (1998), one of the most striking cross-generational differences can be observed when people are given new software to learn. Older folks almost invariably want to read the manual first, afraid they won't understand how the software works or that they'll break something. Nintendo-generation workers rarely even think of reading a manual.
Prensky (2001) also helps to explain why edutainment is a viable method for tuition.
Excerpt from Chapter 5: Fun, Play and Games: What Makes Games Engaging?
GAMES ENGAGE US
Games are a form of fun. That gives us enjoyment and pleasure.
Games are a form of play. That gives us intense and passionate involvement.
Games have rules. That gives us structure.
Games have goals. That gives us motivation.
Games are interactive. That gives us doing.
Games have outcomes and feedback. That gives us learning.
Games are adaptive. That gives us flow.
Games have win states. That gives us ego gratification.
Games have conflict/competition/challenge/opposition. That gives us adrenaline.
Games have problem solving. That sparks our creativity.
Games have interaction. That gives us social groups.
Games have representation and story. That gives us emotion.
Source: Marc Prensky (2001) “Digital Game-based Learning”
A classic example of edutainment is the word-game “Scrabble”. The most important element is the problem solving, the culmination of making words helps subconsciously to keep the mind active and over time can increase a person’s vocabulary usage. A measure of this progression would be observed from scores obtained from one time to another.
Anyway, now that you get the idea.. check out the tabs of edutainment mixes.. designed to re-enforce your appreciations of different personalities (and relationships).
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