We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. – Maria Montessori
“It’s the failure that’s fun,” Will Wright, Game Developer
Spore Creature
Yesterday I asked about good games that help people develop their brains (fancy talk for learn) in meaningful ways. Today I found this article about the inspiration the game Spore draws from Montessori schools. The article is worth a read. I would love to get some insight into the game Spore from people who have played. What is the experience like? Would you recommend using it in an educational setting? Are there other games that you feel engender creativity?
Here are some of my favorite quotes from the article, but its definitely worth a quick read:
“A lot of people have a very low opinion of their own creativity,” he said. “When you give them a tool to make things that they didn’t think they could make it can be very powerful, especially when five or six people comment on it.”
The secret of good teaching is to regard the child’s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination. Our aim therefore is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his inner most core. — Maria Montessori
“In western education we take theories, we deconstruct them, we categorize them and then we teach them in classrooms,” Wright says. “You are going to a school, going to a master, learning theory before you could go practice it.”
“Before that system, it was about practice, it was more of a failure based learning. I think that’s almost a more natural approach. It seems that Montessori is going with the grain in that naturalistic sense. It was later we moved to this narrative method, sitting back, listening-to-a-lecture model .”