Video Games – An Educational Tool?
Video games have long been the bane of educators’ and parents’ existence. They take up too much of the students’ time and interest that, according to teachers, not much is left for more productive endeavors like reading or studying.
But researchers and scientists are planning to transform video games in a way parents and teachers would never have thought possible. Instead of being a threat to students’ education, researchers see video games as the next revolutionary education tool.
The Federation of American Scientists recently divulged the results of a year’s worth of studies about the potential of video games as a learning tool. According to the group, students’ addiction to video games can be utilized so that they actually study and learn, without being told to do so by their teachers or parents.1
The group cited many reasons why they are pushing for exploring the potential of video games as an education tool.2
- Video games help develop analytical skills.
- Video games encourage team building.
- Video games are simply more interesting to students than textbooks.
- There is already a market for educational video games. In the United States alone, there are already 45 million homes with video games consoles and around 75 million individuals who grew up on video games (aged 10-30).
- Video games help develop users’ ability to solve problems under pressure.
- Video games enhance the users’ multitasking skills.
- Time need not be spent teaching students how to play video games as they are already familiar with how they work.
- As teachers, video games are consistent in their manner of teaching.
- Video games never lose patience.
- Video games encourage interaction.
- Video games can give students a venue where they can apply what they learn in the classroom.
- Video games can emphasize what is learned in the classroom.
Some educators, using their own experience, are already vouching for the idea. Jenien Passigli, a teacher from Syracuse who uses video games to teach her seventh-grade Spanish class, relates from experience how effective video games are as a learning tool. According to her, once she started using the video games, her students’ reading, writing and spelling skills began to improve. The video games also perked up her students’ interest in the class. In one ten-day period, she states, her students logged on to their class’ video games website 2000 times.3
So how do we turn the vision of using video games into a global reality?
The group stated that before this happens, research on what features of video games can best be used as a learning tool and how students can be tested (on what they learn from the games) must first be done. Then, they have to be marketed directly to schools to make sure that students get access to the games.
But the greatest challenge could be something far less technical: convincing teachers that video games are actually effective learning tools and not just mere toys.4
SOURCES:
1-3 Feller, Ben. “Group: Video games can reshape education”, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061017/ap_on_sc/video_games.
2-4 “Using Video Games in the Classroom”, http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story.aspx?
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