Farb - while I appreciate your dogmatic hatred of the educational establishment, you need a bit of a reality check.

Ackoff's take is pointless. How is learning from an inanimate object insulting? Education should be about results, not about means. His "take" is akin to saying booking tickets for a flight online is insulting because you don't speak to a travel agent. If kids are learning, who cares how they learn?

As for your point about the correlation between income levels and SAT scores, so what? What about the other part of the chart that shows a correlation between ethnicity and SAT scores? Children of Asian families earning between $20-$30K score better than students from Hispanic and African-American families earning $70K+. That says that emphasis on education matters too.

I don't think the game is actually going to be used by students. Kids hate when their parents or educators think they are trying to make education "fun". It's usually a disaster because have "fun time" and "serious time" and crossing the two just irritates teenagers.

It's a pretty good idea, I think. Teachers tend to pick favorites, and in many cases will absolutely refuse to help a lot of their students just because they dislike them. A video game can't discriminate.

Now, I really doubt that many kids will actually try this. As "An Educator" said, most kids really, really hate learning games.

As for the whole "The more money your family makes, the better you do on the SAT" thing goes: I'm so sick of hearing this bull. My family is middle class, I have no DS or anything fancy like that, and I still do well on the SAT. You know WHY? Simple.

I took a stupid algebra class at public school, which pretty much everyone is required to do, and then I took an English class. After that, it's a matter of studying the material sai classes provide you with.

It's not money that makes you do better on the SATs; it's effort. Many of today's kids are just horrifyingly lazy, and half of them don't seem to give a damn about their future. "I'll just be a prostitute" is something I hear all over the place at school.

Time to finish this up; said kids won't do on their SATs because they don't care. When questioned, they'll say something like "well, my parents never got me anything to study with" or some such crap, trying to throw the blame on others. If you put in the effort, you'll do well. If not, you'll fail.

Good point!! I choose Kaplan SAT programs which helps me a lot...

I've taught over a thousand SAT kids. I've dealt with a lot of their parents. @An Educator what are your teaching credentials? Why are you so afraid to leave your email or a web link?

I loved every one of my public school teachers. I loved school. Most kids don't. It's the educators' fault that the kids don't love school and learn a lot. Your bad.

@ Farb - you are making a false assumption that having experience means you are good at something. What were your results? You could teach one child and have great results or teach thousands and have terrible results. Parents would usually chose the former since that's what people care about.

The email and URL fields are optional so I shouldn't feel the need to leave one. Why do my credentials even matter? You have still failed to address the logic of my arguments. You make poor analogies in your other posts and still can't refute what I say. Just because you have a blog doesn't give you a right to make poor assumptions and outlandish statements. You put up a blog and put yourself out there. That's great. You should also be prepared for criticism.

Another error to note: "It's the educators fault" should be "It's the educator's fault". "Your bad" isn't great English but I'll let that one go. "Bad" is actually an adjective. That's kind of like saying "Your great" or "Your high". Complete sentences tend to help students learn better than incomplete ones. An experienced teacher should know that.

@An Educator Blogs are conversational means of communicating, not educational texts. Therefore, they are not expected to have perfect grammar and spelling. Therefore, since you know nothing of me, my methods, the results of my many students, or what we are doing at Grockit, your dismissal of our blog or ideas based on typos and common language is malicious, not logical.

The standards of conversational grammar are entirely different that of written.

My results were great. Thanks for asking.

No, it's the educators' fault.

or- It's the fault of the educators.

"The fault of educators" is most correct. Good job changing it in your comment so that it doesn't look like an error. I've clearly hit a raw nerve on your grammar so I'll leave your blog alone. I wish you the best of luck with your business.

@An Educator Please become the de facto grammar and spelling check for the Grockit Blog and Website.

Being as I haven't deleted any of your comments, correcting the typos that you mention in your comments is not really a way of making it look as though there was no error.

Anyways, please continue to mention any other typos or errors you notice. I would recommend losing the anger.

We love and support everyone that wants to be a teacher and help others but we also will try and do something about the problems that get in the way of that happening.

@An Educator - You comments and or ideas about my daughter are opinions that you created based on minor facts to support a fact. Our education system SUCKS! And will continue to SUCK until a company like GROCKIT embraces the forever evolving interests of our children. My little girl is four, she reads, she writes, and her vocabulary is far beyond her years, that does not come from her gaming, that comes from the endless hours her mother and I spend taking her interest, embracing them, and helping her get excited about learning. Gaming is a spoke on her overall educational experience. It's narrow minded educators like yourself that dumb and numb our youth, and place focused parents like my wife and I, on the fence over learning institutions or home schooling. My little girl attends school for the social interaction to build her skills relating with her peers. That really is the strongest feature of learning institutions, not the education. GROCKIT is taking learning to a new level, a level that across the board will ensure confidence with parents that their child is growing intellectually, not just coming off the line like out of a factory. I could only speculate against your negative position with educational gaming, gaming is not going anywhere, games are getting better and better and our children are starting to play these games at earlier ages, Again, my little girl is 4 and could probably take you in a game of MARIO CART.LOL. Formal educators like yourself must not rebel, jump on board and help our kids get the educational growth that they need. Let's Help Make Grockit Make Learning FUN!!!!

GD - you clearly work for or have a financial/personal interest in Grockit. As far as I can tell, Grockit has no product on the market so I'm not really sure how Grockit has made learning fun (yet). It may well do so.

Your last sentence says "Formal educators like yourself must not rebel, jump on board" ... so you don't want me to rebel against the awful educational institutions that America has?

I'm sure that the reason your daughter has done so well thus far is because your wife and you have made a concerted effort to engage her and I laud that but I'm wary of the idea that kids have to play games to learn. I agree with you that games can be a valuable supplement but they can't replace a solid education.

I've been criticized on this site before for being too harsh so I will avoid criticizing your writing or grammar but I do hope you realize that if I was so narrow minded, I wouldn't be on a site like this openly debating educational topics.

A little dose of reality and a healthy dose of skepticism regarding gaming's role in education may do you some good.

Farb, I agree with you that this company is probably most interested in cashing in on the Brain Age, ummm, age. But, I also believe that it takes the general public enormous amounts of time to accept new ideas like learning being fun. I think our society needs to get ready for a BIG change in our views of education and what it means to be educated. I've been doing some research on new ways to learn and just from the little I can tell from the info about Grockit, it looks like an awesome solution. But, there are lots of different kinds of people in this world. Most people don't trust new ways of thinking until they can SEE the results. Things like the SAT for DS are at least a step in the right direction to thinking of education in a different way! I can't wait to see more about Grockit! www.thefuninlearning.com

Farb (and grockit) are definitely tuned in to the fact that learning is primarily a social exercise. While I agree that learning should be fun and joyful, I think that more fitting words might include: "feedback" and "engagement". One reason as a kid that i was addicted to my Atari 2600 is that it provided me with constant feedback...I could learn from the mistakes I just made. Even the most grueling and difficult learning becomes worthwhile and fun when we are engaged and are getting continuous feedback. The feedback piece is essential, because we learn and improve via our mistakes or new challenges that arise. Thus, I believe that gaming/learning that involves the social component of learning and the continuous demonstration of understanding is key.