20
SD Times
June 2022
How www.sdtimes.com
BY KATIE DEE
games
the education
A
s young children, it’s normal to utilize games and playtime as a way to discover and learn about the world around us. The ways in which play relates to cognitive growth and development throughout childhood and beyond has been carefully studied in psychology — however, it remains vastly underused within the education system. With the majority of children having to adapt to online schooling in the wake of the pandemic, JD Calvelli, analyst at the University of Chicago’s Center for Radial Innovation for Social Change (RISC), began exploring the role that games and play can have in enriching a child's learning experience, especially in a remote setting. “I think in general, the education system hasn’t really caught up to the reality of today and the onset of modern technologies,” Calvelli said, “A lot of that became especially evident postpandemic when we had to rapidly adapt to this new reality of people being in their homes and having to learn through digital technology and we weren’t really ready for that.” He went on to explain that even though some of these technologies are not new, the education system has failed to take full advantage of them. He attributes this to the old school conception that work and learning are not meant to be fun, but rather, the antithesis of it. “We seemed to have arbitrarily decided at some point that after you’re a baby it’s no longer okay to learn through play… 76% of kids in the U.S. play video games, and so the gamification of learning is a way to introduce students to important concepts and meet them
where they are,” Calvelli explained. In pursuit of bringing games into the education sector, RISC, in partnership with educational consultants Enable Education, has created its own learning game, Algo-Rhythm. This data science, music-based game allows children to look deeper at the data behind several popular songs. With Algo-Rhythm, students can create playlists, explore how songs are made, and dance to the beat. Parents can also play along with their children and help them learn about today’s music and the way that data has helped to create it. Intended for late elementary- to early middle school-aged children, the game utilizes Spotify API in order to determine a few key data points about the songs. “Specifically, we focused on values that represented Danceability, Energy, and Tempo — which are each represented in the game as a number out of 10 whenever a player chooses a song in the playlist builder,” Calvelli explained, “Players are then tasked with building playlists, and later
responding to song requests, such that they fulfill specific asks.” Players are expected to use the data represented to them in order to make informed decisions about which songs to add to playlists, or which to use to fulfill certain song requests. The quicker a player is able to make these determinations, the more points they accumulate. Calvelli and his team hope that this game works to teach children two important fundamentals of data science: the fact that data can be found anywhere, and that it can be used to help make more informed decisions. “We really wanted to meet kids where they are, and try our best to give them an experience that would let them have a good time and, at the same time, teach them something or at least inspire them to look at the world in a way they didn't necessarily before,” Calvelli said. He explained that another hope for this game is to serve as an impetus to foster a greater interest in learning within students. He explained that by teaching important data science skills through a
