Video%20Games%20and%20Education

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Video Games and Education

• TechEd 2007

www.genconnection.com/online/teched2007.ppt
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Far Side by Gary Larson
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Facts

• academic experts across the country are
  unearthing educational benefits in the digital
  games surveys show that video games are now
  played by more than 80 percent of American young
  people ages 8 to 18.
• 
  Howard Witt, Chicago Tribune, Feb 11, 2007

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Facts

• Video game sales exceeded the movie industry's
  annual box office draw last year 2002 by 1
  billion. USA Today Dec. 23, 2002
• The video game industry has out-grossed
• the movie industry every year since 2002.

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Some researchers even suggest supplanting much of
the traditional back-to-basics K-12 curriculum
with a new generation of game-based materials to
capture the increasingly short attention spans of
today's youth.
Howard Witt, Chicago Tribune, Feb 11, 2007
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World of WarCraft

• Over 7 million players in this
• MMPOG massively multi-player online game
• The World of WarCraft

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"But it shouldn't come as a surprise that when
our economy has changed, when innovation and
creativity are much more important than rote
memorization, that the system needs some real
updating to train kids how to use computer games
to solve problems in the real world." David
Williamson Shaffer, How Computer Games Help
Children Learn. University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Simulation games in particular have already been
embraced by some educators, as well as many
businesses and the U.S. military, as effective
ways to introduce people to environments and
situations that would otherwise be too expensive,
dangerous or impossible to access.
Howard Witt, Chicago Tribune, Feb 11, 2007
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Other researchers are studying what students
learn when they join other players across the
Internet in creating characters, or avatars, in
online fantasy or role-playing games, such as
Second Life, There or World of Warcraft.
Howard Witt, Chicago Tribune, Feb 11, 2007
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Principle 1

• Good gaming requires that players feel like
  participants not spectators.

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Principle 2

• Good gaming accommodates different styles of play.

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Principle 3

• Good gaming places the player in an authentic
  game situation.

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Principle 4

• Perceptions and actions are deeply connected

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Principle 5

• Problems/obstacles need to be well-ordered and
  the steps clear.

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Principle 6

• Learning needs to be sufficiently frustrating.

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Principle 7

• Players need to be encouraged to step-up their
  games.

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Principle 8

• Information needs to be on-demand and
  just-in-time.

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Principle 9

• Simplified minature models can help learners
  grasp concepts that can later be applied to more
  complex systems later.

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Principle 10

• The risks of learning must be considered.

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Principle 11

• Seeing the big picture

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Classroom Application

• Marc Prensky
• Todays learners are Digital Natives
• We are Digital Immigrants

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Classroom Application

• Motivation in learning is concerned with
• Interaction with content
• Interaction with peers
• Interaction with teacher
• Lack of motivation usually points to one of a
  lack of one or more of these factors.

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Gaming Implications

• Reduce formal instruction
• Replace with gaming activity
• Rely on student trial-and-error
• Rely on peer learning
• Relate goals and timelines
• Realizes risk taking but in mediated place