You know them. They show up to school and want to sleep through first period to help their swollen, bloodshot eyes. They claim to have camped out all night at Best Buy to be the first one with the latest version of World of Halo Grand Theft Madden Battlefront 15. Their grandmothers just shake their heads, their mothers hope that one day they will leave the basement for a nice girl, and their teachers tell them that their minds will turn to mush if they don’t turn the video games off and pick up a book.
While worries of violent and aggressive behaviors, stifled thinking, self-alienating behaviors, and undermined role identities have been documented, there has been a shift in the value of video games towards education. Games have been heralded as beneficial educational tools since the Piaget days of the 1960’s, but are just now taking root in the classroom in video form (p425). Games with puzzles, strategy, and role playing can provide:
- Motivation
- Enhance effectiveness of learning
- Transfer of knowledge to other contexts
- Development of ideas with real-time brainstorming
So the shift is happening from video games at home to video games as learning tools at school. Are you ready as an educator? Games can be effective as learning tools, but the way we deem them valuable is through assessment. Is the content effectively designed so that the student learns? Is there a real objective with a reliable tool of measurement or is to focus on content too narrow?
The reality is that games can provide continued practice much like the flashcards of the old days, but can also provide opportunities for students to construct their own concepts. Imagine a video game that is engaging with powerful interactive multimedia, motivational, and actually facilitates mediated learning. As far as processed based learning, the contextual games train students to confront a question, make a hypothesis, and then prove the hypothesis. Discovery and achievement are fundamental to the games and they can improve memory and accuracy (p425). Moreover, video games can lead to an interactive experience in which the student learns by doing with user-centered design features (p426). Hmmm, sounds like critical thinking to me.
Games with the intent for learning content are not new, just new to the classroom in the form of video games. Are you ready for the change? I know that I am ready for games in my classroom, or better yet, at home. I like the idea of having students play these games in their free time at home as a nice supplement to more traditional lessons (if logistically possible). In fact, this reading has prompted me to seek out websites that promote the best websites to find educational video games. Here is another blog I found listing some cool games with thorough descriptions: http://www.collegeathome.com/blog/2008/06/03/virtual-learning-25-best-sims-and-games-for-the-classroom
Feel free to post your favorite websites for video games that are actually beneficial to learning in the classroom! I will collect them and post them separately in the next month.
Hong, Cheng, Hwang, & Chang (2009). Assessing the educational values of video games. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 25, 423-427.
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