Learn To Code In A Video Game

9/13 – Updated to clarify who created Siri.

This looks promising. An educational games company is using a next gen Siri, the voice responsive assistant on the iPhone, in an educational video game. What make this different from other educational games is the game comes first and the learning is just a natural embedded part of it.

Kutao Studios

The game is thus: you start off in a crashed spaceship. You have to escape but in order to do so you have to override and rewrite parts of the ship via writing computer code. You can converse with a next gen Siri to help you with coding. What makes this Siri different is it can have a conversation and it remembers what you last asked. Great idea and I hope this makes it’s way into more games.

What is very significant here is the idea of having a virtual teacher to help you through the game. It doesn’t get tired and it will answer as much detail as the student needs. This technology will get better and better. I wonder if in a few years you will be able to subscribe to Siri type assistants for a variety of topics?

• Next-gen Siri Will Teach Kids to Code in New Game | Wired Business | Wired.comDisruptive to code schoolstags: education technology siri video game gamification nell
  • Welcome the world of Kuato Studios, a London-based startup developing a third-person-shooter-style game designed to teach kids how to code. Company founder Frank Meehan pulled together a team of developers from Rockstar, Konami and other top-shelf gaming companies earlier this year to build what he sees as an antidote to too much boring educational software.
  • the game comes with a secret weapon those other games don’t have — Siri’s heir apparent.
  • As Siri was being brought to market, its inventors at SRI were already hard at work on the next step in Siri’s evolution. In Kuato’s game, it’s this smarter Siri who will help talk kids through coding puzzles, but with a key improvement over the iPhone incarnation: the power of conversation.
  • Next-gen Siri remembers. It’s context-aware. Call-and-response has evolved into dialogue.
  • Spanish bank BBVA has already started testing the chattier version of Siri as part of a pilot program with SRI nicknamed Lola. The bank’s customers will interact with Lola like they would with a bank teller, if the technology works as promised. In Kuato’s game, set to come out later this year, the Lola-like chat-drone will serve as an always-available teacher. with an expert knowledge of XML and JavaScript, the two languages the game will initially teach.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.