Gaming in Education

I do not know what the program is called, but I recently read an article where a high school teacher introduced a role playing leveling system for his class. Similar to role playing games like D&D, the teacher would let students create their own avatar with stats and abilities. Tests, exams, quizzes and homework give students experience points which may eventually level them up. Each level grants them a small reward of sorts. Every now and then, the students can use their avatars to do PvP in the form of word battles and such. I am unsure how that worked though. However, the whole idea seemed fantastic and wished more teachers would implement something like that.

 

There's a good list of educational video games on Youtube. Sesame Street ABC, Ernie's big Splash, Museum Madness, Carmen Sandiego, Number Muchers, Reader Rabbit, Junior Adventure Series, The Oregon Trail, Math Blaster, just to name a few. Most of them are NES games.

 

The only times i have seen "games'' being usefull for education are those lame games where you have to guess the right word and description or other simple thingy's like that.

 

That sounds amazing. Brilliant, really. Innovative teachers are always the bet ones. Anyone can repeat a lesson from a book. Good teachers engage students and make them want to learn. What better way than by making it fun?

 

Putting gaming in education can increase productivity of the students. Gaming can improve focus during class and frequent gaming also helps to enhance your rate of performing mathematical operations. Besides, a lot of games make sure that the gamer remembers a good amount of stuff from the game. I believe we should really put this into consideration.

 

I am not a teacher but I am a student.
I think that educational games would do wonders to our educational system because then everyone would actually want to and enjoy learning. I recently handed out surveys in my school and 92 out of a 100 agreed that educational games will work in schools.

 

I think we can definitely learn new things from games but I don't think it currently has a place in the current educational systems. I think these games should be used as an extra learning tool rather than replacing currently existing methods of teaching. See it as a fun way to use what you have learned at school. This would definitely work for very young kids (say ages 5-10) but I think older children wouldn't be as fond of these games as they'd rather play the popular titles like Call of Duty. In comparison to that, educational games might be found boring by many students

 

Yeah, this is another problem. Keeping interest for students. It's not like some simple flash game will keep a teenage engaged at all. Also, there are only some ways that games could be used for educational purposes. Minecraft for a design class maybe, or for intro to computer science. DDR for Physical Education. That's about it. For electives like economics, psychology, etc. games may be somewhat useful, like simulation of an economy in Minecraft. Easy to do, but would parents or the school board approve of that, even after knowing the benefits? Because at the end of the day, people would just hear "video games," and they'd think of all the sterotypical connotations paired with it.

 

When I was at School, we had a game called PacMath. It was great, because we would all be trying to beat each others high-scores; whilst being "forced" to answer mathematical questions and equations every now and then.

The aim of the game was obviously to teach mathematics in a fun way. I found that it "did the trick", and that my friends and I actually learnt some new mathematical equations whilst being competitive at the same time.

 

I remember the games we used to play in Math class that were like *you can't progress unless you sole this equation* and I never liked those games. But simulation games can be really fun and educational for that specific thing.

 

Back when I was still in high school our English teacher would setup a projector in our room and connect it to her laptop and would ask for volunteers to play text twist as the whole class watches. Its a very clever way of teaching and introducing to students different and new words along with their meanings and uses.

 

I think everyone wishes they could have a great teacher like that. I had one who would reward us at the end of the semester by bringing in his playstation and letting us have tournament playing different fighting games. He was the best teacher and really knew how to get us motivated and interesting in getting the work done. I don't know why more haven't hit upon using tech to teach.

 

I remember reports about high school teachers using some hardcore historical simulation games (I think it was the first Crusader Knights) to teach history classes. It's a great way to teach, honestly, becasue out of the box, the game is so indepth you can use it to visualize jsut about every aspect of historical geography, warfare, and other stuff.

 

Use of gaming in the educational world can change the way we think about education. I think it is a really cool idea and more and more teachers should implement them. Then no classes would ever become boring and difficult. In the beginning it must be really difficult to change the entire system but once it is done it would benefit both teachers as well as students.

 

I believe that gaming can be implemented into education, but under very strict circumstances. I don't think that elementary through high school can implement video games into the curriculum effectively. However, my uncle is specialist surgeon that uses video games to train his fingers. Surgeons these days commonly perform from a monitor rather than looking directly where they are working. This means that incisions can be extremely small and the surgery can be done entirely from a small camera. Video games train hand eye coordination to make this possible. So, they can be used, just rarely.

 

I earned my degree in Elementary Education back in 1995. While I am no longer a teacher, I would most certainly have included games in my classroom if given the chance. In fact, we even had a class that focused on how to best incorporate computers and games into a curriculum (and this was back in 1994!).

We learned how to use the LOGO programming language, along with how games like SimCity, Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail could be incorporated into our lesson plans. I'm sure there are other games today that should be included on that list.

 

I remember when I was in primary school, we could play games like The magic school bus and learn about body and how it works it was amazing and educational. Some other ones were like, maths which made it more easier to understand in day to day use, which can be hard if you do not understand the concept. I remember getting to play adventure games and using team work, and helping each other out which worked out real well for the students.