While looking for a subject to write about in this weeks blog, I stumbled across this video:
In this video linguist James Gee makes several statements about education and games.
1. Learning is a pleasure.
People enjoy learning new things. The problem is that many teachers find it difficult to make everything "Fun"
2. Games today have figured out how to tap this pleasure and teach you how to play the game at the same time.
If you think about it, every game is based on a set of rules. If you were to give a person a printed copy of the rules, there would be very little retention. However, if you create a minigame inside the main game that teaches the rules in a fun, simple, and step by step way the retention will be much higher. People remember things if they have fun doing it. Think back to your favorite activity from school. I'm willing to bet it was some kind of game or similar activity that taught a lesson and you didn't even realize you were learning.
Anyone over the age of about twenty can probably remember playing Oregon Trail in school. I know I can. I can't remember most of my teachers names or much of what they taught us, but those days in the computer lab still stand out more than twenty years later. That game taught me many lessons about history, survival, planning, budgeting, good decision making, and working in a team with others. Lessons that I still remember today.
3. Low cost of failure. If the cost of failure is too high you won't explore, take risks, or try new things. You'll get uptight and you think in very narrow ways.
He goes on to say that there still has to be a cost, but it's got to be low enough that it still allows students to take risks. I can see this in myself. I've seen a lot of my friends complain that games are too easy today. When I think back to some of the games I used to play, I would rush through a lot of them. You couldn't save that often, the technology just wasn't there yet, and if you died you had to start over.
If students are constantly worried about failing, they won't take chances. When working on projects they focus simply on doing exactly what's needed to get a good grade. I wonder what would happen in those instances if the teacher tells everyone that the class will pass this project no matter what they do. Would the students take more risks? Would they find different ways of doing things? Would they put their stuff away and spend the rest of the period doing nothing?
4. Modern online games have taken this to the next level by doing so collaboratively. In some games players play in teams. Everyone has different skill sets and you have to work together to accomplish a goal.
Working collaboratively is one of the hardest things to teach. Stop me if you've heard this before, "I can't work with _____, we don't get along". Games can teach people that you don't have to like each other to work together. Eeach person brings their own skills to the project and the group that succeeds the most is the one that makes uses of each person's unique skill set.
But how can games teach things in say a history class?
Some games such as RPGs, role playing games, have a very complex back story. Game makers even publish series of books to go along with the game to flesh out the story. In these stories the game worlds will often have very complex political systems that must be navigated by the player. When players interact with certain sects, that can have repercussions throughout the world and hurt or help the players dealings with other groups.
One of the things I have to teach as a history teacher is how nations interact with each other and those past interactions affect the world today. This could be easily adapted to a game environment. Why couldn't a game developer take the history of the dispute between the Palestinians and the Jews in the Middle East, change the names, add some fantasy elements, but leave the facts the same. Students play the game and when they're done it's revealed they just simulated this conflict. Maybe then give the really history in short cut scenes. Students could then go to their history teacher with all kinds of background knowledge and questions waiting to be asked.
But what about concerns about less social interaction between students?
Gaming, if anything, promotes social interaction. Most people who play games prefer to play with groups of familiar people online. Thanks to services such as Xbox Live, you can play with people all over the world and talk to each other while you play. For example, my family lives about an hour away. My nephews and I will play online with each other in Xbox live and talk to each other while we do it. This way we're able to stay in touch and games are helping us do that. They'll even play together as a family.
The last thing I'll leave you with are these facts from the ESA, Electronic Software Association. They did a study in 2011 of gamers to find out who was playing and what they were playing. Below are some of the results of their study.
- 72 percent of American households play computer and video games.
- The average gamer is 37 years old and has been playing for 12 years. Eighty-two percent of gamers are 18 years of age or older.
- Forty-two percent of all players are women and women over 18 years of age are one of the industry's fastest growing demographics.
- Today, adult women represent a greater portion of the game-playing population (37 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (13 percent).
- Twenty-nine percent of game players are over the age of 50, an increase from nine percent in 1999. This figure is sure to rise in coming years with nursing homes and senior centers across the nation now incorporating video games into their activities.
- Sixty-five percent of gamers play games with other gamers in person.
- Fifty-five percent of gamers play games on their phones or handheld device.
- Parents also see several benefits of entertainment software. Sixty-eight percent of parents believe that game play provides mental stimulation or education, 57 percent believe games encourage their family to spend to time together, and 54 percent believe that game play helps their children connect with their friends.
YouTube (2010). Finding Your Science: What video games can teach our schools. Available from: http://youtu.be/IMqA7PqHySk
