Hopefully they grade the work first. Anyone can "finish" their work quickly haha.

@Mark Wilson
Oregon Trail is awesome. We had it on APPLE II E's when I was in school.

Mark Wilson is my hero. Or my twin. Not sure...

I blazed through my schoolwork all the way through 3rd grade (at which point I was pulled out for home schooling) just so I could get bonus time on Carmen Sandiego :D

I loved that game. Oregon Trail, not so much.

My god. I wish my school had done this. My parents tried to do a brownie points system, that was a quasi allowance, but I was too lazy to earn points. But to earn game-time by being in the top 180?

Meh, I never found incentives much for doing school work, I did it because it needed to be done. Though I wanted to get things done and go on with life, so maybe I was differnt.

Well, that's cool.....do they uh....know about handhelds? I mean, I could get straight F's AND play some games.....without the dork uniform. or the hassel of putting out any effort in skewl.

:P

@DigitalHero:

exactly. I miss me some Oregon trail. I would want to wear a special uniform... or not

I'm sorry, but I am skeptical that this will actually work. This feels like another way to see which stident is smart and who's an idiot.
They should instead give any student this privilage, but they have to earn it by studying and working hard to improve on their marks. Not make it into a (what feels like) a fucking contest - Which these days it is.

I foresee many paint chips in JuicyFruit bottles when those 180 spots become too... competetive.

Wow, that's a great way to reward people for doing well in school. But i wonder what the uniforms look like. They'd have to be pretty awesome looking, otherwise, you'd just be wearing a giant sign proclaiming your top 20 smarts, which unfortunately, in school, doesn't mix well with some of the "cool" kids.

I used to help kids out at an after-school tutoring program a while back. I would bring my DS along so I would have something to do as the kids did their homework, and I started noticing they would try finishing their homework so they could watch me play (trauma center and brain age at the time). I started offering use of my DS as a reward, and you wouldn't believe the marked improvement in the kids whose hobbies included video games (and some whose didn't!). As long as they did their homework right and didn't mess around, they got to use my DS.

Eventually, you have to start teaching them to do well in school not because there's a reward involved, but because they have to do it for themselves and their own interests; that's always the hardest in education, but as far as incentives go, video games sure do the trick. :P

This reminds me of all those years ago when I was in elementary school and we had a lab full of Apple IIe computers. If you finished your work early you could play Pizza to Go, Number Munchers, or Oregon Trail until time was up.

Also UNIFORMS for the best 20??? Those kids are being labled as nerds, geeks, etc and asking for a beating.

@shindokie:
We need a new Oregon Trail with a FPS hunting mode, third person wagon driving, dynamic Indian attacks, and and detailed weapon / supply management. =P

"Miss Smith? What's 'dysentery'?"

Thems was the days.

I remember spending hours a day in 5th grade playing Oregon Trail one, because the computers in the classroom couldn't run the newer version.

Still an amazing game.

Game room? Wow. Well...I know of something somewhat close. But its not a room.

My brother is a 16 year old with a high level case of klinefelter's syndrome (XXXY chromosomes I think) and attends a school for mentally retarded youth. They get graded for behavior throughout the day, and if they behave perfectly well (unfortunately an uncommon event) they are on "blue" level, which is the pinnacle of well behavedness next to the gold level, which requires you to be on blue level for 40 days in a row or so. Only about 5 students in his class were on this level. For good behavior, the students are rewarded with school store credit, with items only purchasable from behaving well and finishing all homework. If a student stays on gold level for quite a long time, they get to pick amongst quite elite items...such as an Xbox 360. Upon learning about this, my brother started doing very, very well in school, and has been on blue level quite a lot more!

So even if this does sound somewhat like a ridiculous reward for students, it at least made one difference for the better. Thank you High Road School, for giving my brother a great education and environment and composing clever ways for him to improve, and thank you Microsoft, for making something my brother really wants resulting in him doing better in school and overally making our lives a bit easier. Oh and Gears of War. That was cool too.

They're actually planning on using Buzz to teach some lessons too. I kid ye not, video games are taking over the world.

IMO... Hell no, only unless it's pure educational games being played. There's a time for school and a time for play. Encouraging them to bust their asses off for some play time is teaching them a bad lesson as well, with jobs these days you can bust your balls 150% and likely still not get that raise or promotion.

We got to play prince of persia in the 4th grade. is sucked at it

I remember this in summer camp, did good, you got to play in the street fighter tourney for 'game time'

It's not a bad idea.. This is a reward, a positive re-enforcement.

Given that this is a school for kids with "learning difficulties", I can see this having mixed results. They're pretty vague on how bad off the students are, but they do specifically mention they cater to kids who are shy and have school-phobia.

They don't mention if they have kids who have acting out problems, who present the primary problem with the uniforms stated above.

On the other hand, as mentioned, video games can be a huge motivator for kids, so I'd say this could go either way.

Oregon Trail, now that takes me back... Hunting down buffalo and deer, only to find out you can bring back 400 pounds, and then the meat rots.

Oh, and the tombstones at the end... Yes, many immature jokes were made, and merriment was had.

I remember a game where we were a paper airplane and had to ride on airvents and avoid bookshelves on our way to the garbage can. Anyone know the game's name?

What? No love for Dino Tycoon? WHY YOU ALL GOT TO SNUB DINOS?

It was Sim City 2000 for me. I used to claim I was staying after for math help, when I was actually in the computer labs gaming. That didn't end well when my parents found out. ;)

Man, I remember when my second grade teacher bought a Donkey Kong arcade game and brought it in to class for the students. Now THAT was an incentive for doing well. What's funny is she still thought video games were a total waste of time, but hey, whatever works.

@Troubadour:

Ah, rotting meat. Trying not to die before you get to the next fort....

@ReginaldTheSeventySecond: That sounds more like a problem with the working world than with this idea. When handed out judiciously, positive reinforcement can be very effective.

One thing you fail to mention is it isn't about GRADES. It is about behavior. They aren't giving the passes to the smartest students, but to the most well-behaved.

@Furious_Liver: Overlord of the Netherworld...but not Kotaku...: That reminds me of my brother's school, only instead of students with mental disabilities and positive re-enforcement through store credit, it is mostly students with psychological problems and seeing the lion king on broadway.

****ers are wasting their budget with school trips like that, when they could be doing the same thing as your brothers school.

@Ghede: Seriously. A 360 lasts about 5x as long as the Lion King musical, assuming the show is 3 hours long. What a bunch of foolers indeed.

So it's an expensive version of not cracking them across the knuckles with a ruler?

Oregon Trail > You

Not sure about the uniforms, but whatever floats their boat into getting them to study harder.

I remember Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail as well as Picadilly Circus. Better incentives to get studying compared to smiley face and star stickers. Though pencils with our names inscribed on them were pretty snazzy.

Wouldn't this rise other issues? Like parents complaining some children are not being neglected, and/or making them feel not as smart compared to the children who got rewards for it? I remember having some similiar thing back when I was middle school (Kids who got good grades was able to play games on teh computer), but that quickly got disregarded because parents complained.

I applaud the faculty of Selly Oak School for trying something different to motivate students into achieving higher grades, but I'm saddened that it takes bribery to make perfectly able students WANT to learn.

Here in New York, Bloomberg and The Board of Education was actually willing to suggest paying top students if they can score high marks on major standardized tests. This only shows that they're is a serious problem with todays youth if they don't believe a proper education is a reward in itself and determination to learn is enough motivation to reap more of those rewards.

Although it sounds like a good idea, is it really going to motivate the kids that are already on the bottom 1/2 of the pool?

"I could bust my ass 24/7 studying for this test for the CHANCE to play a Wii, or I could spend all that time actually playing a Wii at my house"

Case closed.

@djricekcn: I think the special uniforms is the worst thing about it. Seriously, what the hell. Its one thing to get a reward that many others don't get, its another to be one of the few bastardic enough to wear clothing that boasts it. XD

@Pixelante: While agree with you overall...I think there is the connection children have to make with hard work paying off. I think that if as you grow the reward becomes less about games and and fun and more about freedom and ability to choose (say special elective courses for kids who perform) then as you progress you gain a sense of hard work paying off in the long term...i dunno this is kind of how my high school worked and i think i turned out pretty well :/

I remember when they used to let us play Number Muncher, Carmen Sandiego, and Oregon Trail for good behavior. It's the same thing...

Man, those were great games.

In the UK we get paid approximately between £10-30 per school week in our final two years of high-school (those years being optional) depending on financial situation, attendance and if you maintain the discussed "targets" of grades. But frankly, these targets can be something as simple as "Maintain a C grade in class X". You also got a £150 bonus twice a year if you got the required exam results. It was nice but not a major incentive to go to school. Mostly cause I had a job and was earning £50 a week for 8 hours work (plus any overtime I wanted) . Personally I had no interest in sitting in school playing games when you could do it sitting at home, on a nice couch with a cuppa.

Eheh! In my time, they tried something like that with the ONE computer in the whole school (I'm pretty sure it was a teacher's personal computer too, since it was in one classroom only), and whoever got to use it had only MSpaint to play with... or one of those educative games (although everyone chose MSpaint... go figure)

I was a bad ass kid. Therefore I participated in something just like this, almost 15 years ago.

Every day I didn't get in trouble, I got 15 minutes to play SNES (and a Nintendo with a Power Pad)

While it didn't motivate me to like school more, it sure did keep me out of trouble.

I think this would work in a elementary school setting best. If you can get kids to build up the basic skills for learning and doing work by offering an incentive, they should be able to do better later on in life when they are on their own.

I never won at Carmen Sandiego ._.

Haha. I would totally be able to get into this at my school now.
The top 30 students of my class level all got caught in a cheating scandal, putting me, a guy in the top 40, into the top 10 of my class.
Too bad all my school offers for being the best is plagiarized assemblies and t-shirts. Though I am totally considering sending in the "Mikey Mouse" T-shirt I got to Disney. I could totally get my school shut down.

And now that the little kid in me has had his rant,
That's actually a pretty good idea. I definitely believe it would work.

This would've been awesome to have when I was in school. I never got rewarded for finishing my work quickly lol. Or for getting good marks. Or for good behavior. It seemed like the kids that generally misbehaved that were rewarded with all sorts of cool toys and junk just for being good for a day. Sense no make. =(

All I get is a "Blue Star" on my ID badge that lets me go to the library during my study halls.

Wii > Library

"All I got for finishing my work quickly was first dibs on Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail."

Heh, yep I remember those days. Our school only had one copy of Carmen Sandiego, everyone else had to play eith Oregon Trail or Turtle.

We had a game called Dr. Quandary.

Oregon Trail hell yeah. Carmen Sandiego hell yeah.

There were others though. Word Munchers, anyone?

Also, Dr. Quandary - that game had amazing graphics. It had that dark cave where you could almost never make it out. Then there was the factoring asshole who always beat you and didn't let you cross the bridge.

My middle school honors problem consisted entirely of brainteasers and Carmen Sandiego. I have no idea why they bothered, but I wasn't about to pass up the chance to play with that mysterious mistress of the Apple IIe.

in the 5th or 6th i always got to play driver 1 in history class after finishing work because the teachers son had installed it, and we would have highscore competitons. Good times.