The Motivational Magic of Learning Software
by Dan Lang

I remember when we bought our first piece of educational software for my daughter who was then five and though it said it was made by the "Learning" Company, it looked to me to be essentially a game.

I installed the program and we started playing it together until she was able navigate on her own. She seemed to be enjoying herself and was making headway, when she came to me and said "Dad come here. I want you to read this to me." She showed me a four line riddle in which you had to choose a word that would make sense in the context of the sentence.

Since we encouraging her to read on her own, I said to her "Well, why don't you read it to me." After a few "But, dad's....., she slowly and somewhat reluctantly at first, started to work her way through the text. I then asked her to take a guess at the answer and she got it right. Five minutes later she was back again with the same request and again I asked her to see if she could read the passage on her own. Again she started to work her way through the short passage. This time she had to identify a word definition. She got the right answer and back she went to the game. The next time I heard from her, was about half an hour later when she had got all the way to the tower in the castle and she was about to win a prize. She wanted to show me. She was very proud of herself.

Now this was a young girl who had been read stories from a very young age and thoroughly enjoyed the experience but wasn't yet motivated to read on her own. This experience changed that. She was suddenly very motivated to read. In her first sitting with this program she was thoroughly engaged for over an hour and a half.

Then the pennies started to drop and this is what I have come to better understand through my subsequent involvement in this field. Good educational software for younger children can activate their motivation to use their emerging skills or knowledge, simply by giving them an experience they really enjoy .

Educational or learning designed software is often called "Edutainment" a phrase which I feel may diminish what good educational software is really capable of effecting. Many parents, who have never had much direct experience with educational software, have often told me they believe that these programs are really just games with a little bit of education thrown in to keep "the parents" happy. Well let's go back and take a look at what was really going on with my daughter, as an example. First she was highly motivated to use her emerging reading and language skills because it allowed her to do something she really enjoyed. More importantly, let's look at the real results. She was reading words and sentences on her own. She was reading to understand the meaning of the text, both exercising her reading comprehension and knowledge of vocabulary. She was sticking with a learning focused task longer than I had ever seen before. She was also gaining self confidence as she was realizing that she was able to read and understand at a much higher level that she believed herself capable of doing.

She played with this program on and off for well over a year - not bad for a $35 investment in one good program. Today, at the age of ten, she is an avid reader and just completed book four of the Harry Potter series.

Dan Lang started Learning Village and is the father of two young and developing children.

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