Educational Games: A $5 Billion Dollar Market

Any market this big is bound to bring in the big boys and Google is seriously looking at getting into the educational game business on an App basis.

According to the article Google Pushes Education Software Through App Store Google seeks to lure more educational developers and is stepping up efforts to generate revenue from educational related applications.

Obadiah Greenberg, Google’s business development manager for education said that “If we can provide access to education apps to our 10 million users in thousands of schools, then that would be a win all around.”

I say “What does this potentially do to the educational game market…it opens it wide. And, more importantly, if someone can learn algebra from a smartphone, what does this do to the schools (who by-the-way) still ban mobile devices since that can’t figure out how to integrate them into the curriculum.”

This is one more step in an interesting revolution occurring in education outside of the formal school system.

This on the heals of another interesting article called Want to get your kids into college? Let them play

The article states that

The beauty of a play-based curriculum is that very young children can routinely observe and learn from others’ emotions and experiences. Skills-based curricula, on the other hand, are sometimes derisively known as “drill and kill” programs because most teachers understand that young children can’t learn meaningfully in the social isolation required for such an approach.

It is Bandura’s social learning theory and, who knew, its still relevant today. (actually, a lot of us knew).

So, combining Google’s new focus on game-based learning, the continuing refusal of schools to incorporate consumer technologies into the curriculum and the growing understanding that games contribute to learning in ways conventional curriculum does not…now may be the time for a real push for game-based learning and a revamp of traditional K-16 curriculum. And, even, corporate curriculums.