Gaming in Education
I have recently become very interested in the idea of gaming in education. Games provide an opportunity to for critical thinking and can be a form of experiential learning that can be provided on a much larger scale than traditional types of experiential learning.
Games support:
- Active learning
- Experiential learning
- Problem-based learning
- Immediate feedback
- Learner-centered learning
I’ve created a page on gaming in education to share some of what I’ve found. I would also recommend reading Marc Prensky’s book.
May 25th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Thanks for all of the links on your Gaming page. I am a 41-year old teacher. I was a teenager in the days of PacMan when you needed a quarter to play- so my gaming experience is very limited. Some of the facts you posted from the Learning Federation- like that an 8th grader plays video games an average of 5 hours per week- made me think about the 8th graders I work with every day. It also made me think about what did with all of my free time back in 1980 when I was an 8th grader. Your links led me to some interesting games that would seem to be of great value to my students. This year there were several Palestinian students in my classes. Using the games Under Siege and Peacemaker could be very empowering for those minority students to know that their classmates were being exposed to and learning about the volatile situation in the Middle East. My “safe search” kept me out of the Propoganda Games links. Are those games designed to teach kids how to recognize propaganda or are they games created by the “propagandists” to promote their ideology? I enjoyed reading Marc Prensky’s blog and appreciated his comments about having students and educators working together on curriculum planning. He suggests that ANY conference about educating our kids should have students represented in equal numbers. Let’s face it- the kids are the experts when it comes to gaming- the teachers need to be there to guide the kids so that the gaming is an appropriate learning experience.