Video Game Helps Math Students Vanquish an Archfiend: Algebra

The eighth-grade math class at Intermediate School 30 in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, sounded like a video arcade on Monday morning as 30 students zoomed through virtual tunnels and zapped competitors with a blue freezing light.

“You have to be at the top of your game,” said Salma Nakhlawi, 13, who has been brushing up on her math skills along with her hand-eye coordination so that she can play the video game Dimension M with her friends. “I used to hate math, but I’ve started to like it. I actually understand it more.”

“At the core, we are trying to understand what’s fun for kids in this age group and relate that to what’s learning,” said Ken Perlin, a computer science professor at N.Y.U. who will direct the new institute, which will have 14 faculty members, drawn from the six institutions, including Columbia’s Teachers’ College.

John Nordlinger, a senior research manager for Microsoft, said that the company had previously backed efforts to promote computer science among college students but that this project was its first effort to try to improve math and science skills in middle school students. “It turns out that this is a really hard problem,” he said.

“The content is primary to us — we want the child to be well versed in algebra — but secondary to them,” she said. “They do it because they want to play the game.”
Ayman El Haddad, 13, who said he has been playing video games since he was 8, said he was skeptical at first about Dimension M but now plays it exclusively. He spends three hours a night, five days a week, on the game, often enticing a few of his classmates to join him.
As Ayman has improved at the game, so has his math grade — rising to a 93 at the end of the last school year, from 85 in the first marking period. He explained: “I started studying more because of the game.”

Me hubiera fascinado tener algo así cuando estaba en Secundaria o Prepa. Hubiera sido más divertido aprender matemáticas y álgebra, que odiaba.

Creo que es un medio importante que puede cambiar la forma en que aprenden los niños y que se conocen a sí mismos ya que muchas veces a esa edad te cierras a materias que crees difíciles por lo que todos dicen sin siquiera saber si eres apto y bueno para ellas. Entonces mientras sea un medio de aprendizaje y no se quede en lo banal y superficial, esta forma de aprendizaje, y sobre todo de estos temas, me parece favorable.