Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning By Karl M. Kapp San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons 2007 410 pp. hardcover

Is there a way to make learning fun? Is there a way to motivate people to learn on their own time? Is there a way to make knowledge transfer from the current employees to the up-and-coming generations? Is there a way to tap into the 90-million individuals in the "gamer" generation who will be inheriting the job positions in the present?

For Dr. Karl M. Kapp, the answer is simple: Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning. He suggests that gamers have a different learning style, given a kind of mental rewiring from their long exposure to games. Gamers ignore formal instruction. They like trial-and-error learning. They enjoy exploration and interactive adventuring. They prefer to learn from peers instead of the boomer generation. They tend to be impatient with supervisors and view them as obstacles to their own self-actualization. In this text, he offers different examples of games used in industry - for learning how to scoop ice cream, for learning about dangerous chemicals, for advertising a vodka, for managing inventory control, and for learning a foreign language. Some of the examples make learning sense while others seem to feature a disconnect between the method and the contents (a duck-shoot game to help people learn about dangerous industrial chemicals?).

This text over-states the efficacy of simulation learning and doesn't offer sufficient support for this assertion. It doesn't address the challenges of negative learning from the virtual world into the real, or the research-supported observation that misconceptions may be more easily hidden in sims.

Kapp does acknowledge the high-end costs for creating popular games in the tens of millions of dollars. He points out the wide range of expertise needed to actuate such endeavors, and such budgets clearly exclude higher education institutions - even those very well-funded with grant moneys and donations. The continuing maintenance of games may make games even a tougher sell.

In a sense, then, this book may be for industry...and for them, the need for provable ROI may make this proposition a tough sell.

Low-end builds tend to be low-cost and potentially amateurish. What's left for the academic realm may well be game-master-led learning experiences, which are not really addressed in this text. All said, Kapp's Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning broaches an important question in e-learning - about the role of games in combination with other endeavors. He does offer some fine global insights about the use of emotional avatars and online mentors and making sure that they're not too high fidelity for effectiveness. He offers common sense advice about the need for accessible interfaces. He shows a savvy sense for selecting some examples for emulation.

References

Kapp, K.M. (2007). Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons.