The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter

Front Cover
Macmillan + ORM, Jun 25, 2025 - Computers - 259 pages

What if schools, from the wealthiest suburban nursery school to the grittiest urban high school, thrummed with the sounds of deep immersion? More and more people believe that can happen - with the aid of video games. Greg Toppo's The Game Believes in You presents the story of a small group of visionaries who, for the past 40 years, have been pushing to get game controllers into the hands of learners. Among the game revolutionaries you'll meet in this book:
*A game designer at the University of Southern California leading a team to design a video-game version of Thoreau's Walden Pond.
*A young neuroscientist and game designer whose research on "Math Without Words" is revolutionizing how the subject is
taught, especially to students with limited English abilities.
*A Virginia Tech music instructor who is leading a group of high school-aged boys through the creation of an original opera staged
totally in the online game Minecraft.
Experts argue that games do truly "believe in you." They focus, inspire and reassure people in ways that many teachers can't. Games give people a chance to learn at their own pace, take risks, cultivate deeper understanding, fail and want to try again—right away—and ultimately, succeed in ways that too often elude them in school. This book is sure to excite and inspire educators and parents, as well as provoke some passionate debate.

 

Selected pages

Contents

Prologue
1974
To the Moon and Back in Five Minutes
1996
The Game Layer
Math without Words
Rube Goldberg Brought Us Together
How a Subversive Suburban Teacher Is Using World of Warcraft to Teach
Project Unicorn
A Walk in the Woods
Throw Trucks with Your Mind
The Opposite of Fighting
The Ludic Loop
Acknowledgments
Copyright

Other editions - View all

The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter
Greg Toppo
Limited preview - 2015

Common terms and phrases

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About the author (2025)

Greg Toppo is USA Today's national education and demographics reporter. Toppo was a 2010 Spencer fellow at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and in 2011 he co-led the team that investigated cheating in the nation's public schools, most prominently in Washington, DC, schools under then-Chancellor Michelle Rhee. He lives in Ellicott City, Maryland.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter
AuthorGreg Toppo
PublisherMacmillan + ORM, 2025
ISBN1466879459, 9781466879454
Length259 pages
Subjects › 

Computers / Educational Software
Education / Computers & Technology
  
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