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Imagine you grew up in a developing nation in abject poverty, under a corrupt system where the schools were inadequate, and the syllabi they ran a complete joke. Bicycles were seen as a luxury. No one had home computers.
Now, in the modern world you can use a single speed share bike (Boris Bike), in a flat city. But you've moved somewhere mountainous and suddenly you have 12 gears. But you fail to use them properly because things a westerner would take for granted through their education and life experiences, you've never come into contact with. Concepts are to be learnt before applying to riding a bike.
You need games that teach momentum, power even gravity, with visual representations that clearly display success/failure. Maybe even with power meters. That teach to increase speed going down hills to get halfway up the next hill before your pedalling starts to get labored. Instead of dragging the brakes to the bottom of one hill, then having to get off the bike and push it up the next. (I'm sorry, but what Liz Truss said about how Chinese people operate in the workplace is complete tosh!)
Would you suggest a cycling game (there's some Tour roadie games on the Steam platform) or lots of little online flash games that are "educational"? I can't remember how I learnt. But I probably practiced on those simple side scrolling driving games (buggies, motorbikes, etc) and vaguely remember Codemasters excellent 4 player BMX Simulator on the C64.
mrdestructo
Full Member
Imagine you grew up in a developing nation in abject poverty, under a corrupt system where the schools were inadequate, and the syllabi they ran a complete joke. Bicycles were seen as a luxury. No one had home computers.
So, the 70/80s then. 😆
What are you after anyhow, a cycling game that'll teach people how to cycle?
All the games I've tried have been rotten and would teach you nothing.
I learned to go a bike, by going a bike. I don't really remember having much difficult going from bmx to a geared mtb either.
Ideology and education issues at play here. It's bad enough struggling with body language, direction giving, and cause & effect principles, or morality issues. Many of which are locked into language construction.
Take the giving directions issue above. How can I explain which lever on a shifter to press, and in which direction, which moves the chain back and forth and alters cadence, when there are no body language movements to mimic it?
So, I need repetitive games for them to play until maybe their brain rewire enough to get it. I have hopes for one of the riders, they are on track to train to be a doctor. The other is a hippy artist so I don't know.
Are you maybe over thinking it a bit? Surely anyone can go from single speed to a geared bike in a few hours a worst? It's not exactly a big leap, it's still the same basic principles?
Just put them on bikes and see what happens?
If they crash, they crash! 😆 Maybe just avoid main roads to start. i'd suggest a nice grassy field.
Maybe show them a few youtube videos beforehand.
I think you've got this the wrong way round, in developing countries the mountainous / rural areas tend to be those in poverty and the cities more wealthy.
Also it's not exactly hard is it, ike gets hard to ride in gear, move to next easier gear and so on.
Lego?
Surely you can only learn this through experience
Take them to a pump track.
There is sometimes no substitute for experiential learning.
Codemasters excellent 4 player BMX Simulator
I remember that too, but don't remember it being excellent, but was on Amstrad CPC not C64. Whatever it certainly taught me absolutely nothing about riding a bike!
Would it be possible to have a selection of singlespeed bikes each with a different gear ratio? They could take turns and feel the difference between easier and harder gears without having to also worry about the process of changing gear?
I started on a single speed bike with solid tyres (I’m not joking, 1960’s), then a 3 speed sturmey archer 23” frame when I was 9 and then I saved my paper round money for a 10 speed from Halfords. At no point did anyone show me how to use these bikes, my father wasn’t very mechanically minded despite obtaining a pilot’s licence after retirement from teaching.
I’m sorry OP, I think that you’re overthinking a problem that isn’t there.
I don’t think bicycle riding can be learnt on a computer!
I may be wrong of course, it has been known…
scruffythefirst
Free Member
Take them to a pump track.
is a good shout.
you’ve moved somewhere mountainous and suddenly you have 12 gears. But you fail to use them properly because things a westerner would take for granted through their education and life experiences, you’ve never come into contact with.
It's nothing to do with being a Westerner. Plenty of novices with excellent educations do not understand how to use bike gears properly. They grind away in much too big a gear most of the time, or spin away in the granny ring. You need to just show them that shifting to an easier gear on hills makes it easier to pedal and then a bigger gear on the flat lets you go faster. After then, they just need to practice until it becomes automatized.
@steve_b77 did I say mountaneous is educated and city not? Sorry,
I was tired, must have reversed it. Been travelling around for four days flat. Different regions here see different people. As if they're from different nations. Their attitudes and capabilities are so different. The two riders i'm trying to teach gear usage and pedalling cadence to are from two regions where basic skills we take for granted, (and i know some posters here state it should only take a few hours for them to acclimatise to) are lacking and I honestly believe at the core it's due to missing education.
They spend most of their days doing formal education, which is limited to "teach to test", or"backwash" it's called here. With most not having learnt to swim or ride a bike. Many can't stand, walk or run properly. Their poise is unhealthy. I've had 8yo kids in class who sleep at 00:30 and get up at 06:30 to start the next day. I've trained kids and adults from many countries and different situations. A whole breadth of intelligences and capabilities. To date, here I've encountered the biggest gaps in assumed learning, that I don't think is related to eastern/western principles.
It's the messed up education environment that discludes so much exposure/absorption. There's only so much you can do where there are language, ideology and "backwash" obstacles. Hence computer games with power bars. Something visual to plug those holes.
With most not having learnt to swim or ride a bike. Many can’t stand, walk or run properly.
You're probably familiar with terms such as explicit versus implicit knowledge and declarative versus procedural knowledge. Skills like swimming, riding bikes, running, etc. require implicit procedural knowledge. Giving theoretical explanations will produce explicit declarative knowledge, but that's not enough for skill acquisition. You have to break the skill down into manageable parts and practice until the sub-skills become automatized, then keep combining them into more complex higher-order skills. That automatized knowledge cannot be introspected, you cannot consciously process what all your muscles are doing when you run and you cannot explain how to run to someone who has never tried running. They have to do it. The explicit knowledge provides a scaffold for beginners to understand what they're going to learn to do, but becoming skillful requires developing procedural knowledge and abandoning the reliance on declarative knowledge.
So, if you want to teach people who have never played sports how to ride a bike, you need to build the most basic skills first and introduce more complex ones as the basic ones become automatized. A video game will not require anything like the same processing and neuro-motor skills as actually riding a bike so it won't help them automatize the skills.