Jesse Schell on Video Games in Education

As quality information becomes more easily accessible to young people, the curious are going to become “hyper-educated” says Jesse Schell, professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center and CEO of Schell Games. Schell stopped by Big Think’s offices early this morning to discuss the ways that games might help fill what he calls “the curiosity gap”—the difference in education between young people who are interested in leveraging the Internet to satisfy their curiosity and those who are not. “How do you instill curiosity?” Schell asked before ticking off a few examples of how people like recent Big Think interviewee Katie Salen are reworking traditional educational strategies using games.

According to Schell, video games are the medium that will subsume all others because of their ability to incorporate literature, movies, and social interactions. It’s only a matter of time and technological development, he says, before games will be able to hear and respond to our speech and facial expressions, making them all the more challenging and emotionally engaging.

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