Researchers continue to find new ways to make Pokemon Go dance for science. In a new paper, Iowa State University’s Emily Howell suggests that secondary ed students benefit from replacing traditional classroom tools with more “authentic” tools and situations and communication outlets.
“Anytime teachers can find something that students are already doing, and comes in multimodal form, they can harness that interest and teach students about the tool’s potential,” she explains.
It’s not the first time researchers have used PoGo to serve the educational needs of students; last year, an Arizona State University professor designed a free multi-age-bracket lesson plan that uses the game as a tool to teach cartography, “how to use geospatial technologies and communicate geographic information,” and vocabulary skills for ESL students.
Want more video game education science? MOP’s Andrew Ross has spent what feels like years now writing on the subject; most recently, he surveyed research on games and education in his exploration of the The Video Game Debate.
In other Pokemon Go news, dataminers have uncovered new anti-cheat systems, memory management updates, new sponsor types, better push notifications, tweaks to high-level gym diversity, and most importantly (and most speculatively) “raid” pokemon hints buried in the game’s latest code.
