In his appearance on EconTalk, Tyler Cowen said something that I really agree with: We already have our next great teaching tool, and it’s games. There’s no reason why students in a classroom setting can’t learn physics or mathematics or language through video games, if we can just get past our belief that learning most be painful. Of course, as Cowen pointed out, we also have to commit to games en masse since the production of popular ones is remarkably expensive. From a Yahoo! article about students repurposing their free iPads:

“You have to give school officials in Los Angeles credit for a good idea: put iPads in the hands of over 650,000 students to give them the most advanced learning tools available in an effort to boost their interest in academics.

But the $1 billion plan is taking some heat after students in the nation’s second-largest school district cracked the tablets’ security settings to forgo reading, writing and ‘rithmetic and instead post on Facebook and play games during class time.

‘They kind of should have known this would happen,’ said Maria Aguilera, a student at one of the schools where games briefly replaced academia. ‘We’re high school students after all. I mean, come on.’

The top game choices? Temple Run, Subway Surfing and an unnamed car racing game.”