Video Games/Simulators in Air Traffic Training and New Learning Games Research Institute

NY Times has two articles on "serious games" today.

• The first is on educational video games as middle school teaching tools and announces the new Games for Learning Institute, a $3 million research effort at New York University unveiled Tuesday, and a partnership between Microsoft and six universities (NYU, Columbia, CUNY, Dartmouth, Parsons, and the Rochester Institute of Technology). This institute will research games' effectiveness, create prototypes for new math and science focused games, test games in New York area schools, and share research with game developers and others, but not sell games commercially. Full text:
  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/nyregion/08video.html?th&emc=th
  
• The second, about airtraffic controllers, is summarized below (Full text: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/us/08controller.html?th&emc=th)

"An influx of new air traffic controllers are learning their trade on electronic tower simulators, which one instructor described as "a big Xbox."

The games address a serious problem: Nearly two-thirds of the agency’s 15,000 air traffic controllers will retire by 2017. As a result, 1,700 controllers a year must be hired and trained for the next decade.

Six simulators run "18 hours a day, but the F.A.A. also continues to use its old training method, built around a plywood airport model on a table in the middle of a classroom. Trainees simulate flights by carrying model planes around the room and following instructions from a controller."

In the candidate screening process, a six-hour computerized aptitude test (math, geometry), is followed by game-like tests, designed by psychologists, one a bit like Tetris, and another that simulates air traffic.

Students are provided a hyperactive version of Pac-Man to play in their spare time to keep skills sharp, help them learn to watch several targets at once.