How Digital Games Help Teachers Make Connections to Lessons and Students. It’s not unusual for educators to use analog games in the classroom, but as more classrooms gain access to technology, digital games are also making a strong showing. A recent Joan Ganz Cooney Center survey of 694 K-8 teachers found that 74 percent of those surveyed use digital games in the classroom, up from 50 percent two years ago. Many of the teachers finding the most success are good at creatively connecting the game back to the curriculum, while allowing it to maintain the qualities of a good game. These teachers are often more comfortable with games themselves, playing for fun in their spare time, and are thus more likely to see valuable classroom connections.
It’s one thing to have empirical evidence that digital games are growing in popularity and another to get an in-depth look at how and why teachers see them as a valuable use of precious class time. Zack Gilbert teaches a course called “Ancient Civilizations” at a middle school in Normal, Illinois. 7 Things You Should Know About Games and Learning - ELI7106.pdf. Could Video Games Measure Skills That Tests Can’t Capture? A screenshot from the Posterlet game: choosing negative or positive feedback.
Imagine you’re playing a computer game that asks you to design a poster for the school fair. You’re fiddling with fonts, changing background colors and deciding what activity to feature: Will a basketball toss appeal to more people than a pie bake-off? Then, animal characters — maybe a panda or an ostrich — offer feedback on your design. You can choose whether to hear a compliment or a complaint: “The words are overlapping too much,” or, “I like that you put in the dates.” You can use their critiques as guides to help you revise your poster.
Finally, you get to see how many tickets your poster sold. This little Web-based game isn’t just a game. “In our assessments we make little fun games, and to do well at the games you need to learn something,” says Dan Schwartz, the director of the AAA Lab at Stanford University. Right now, he’s working on a series of video games called Choicelets. Copyright 2014 NPR. eSchool News » Researchers: Even violent video games can be learning tools » Print. NYU's Games for Learning symposium explores how people learn—and how gaming can influence that From staff and wire reports Read more by staff and wire services reports May 28th, 2010 Panelists discussed how people learn and how games can be engineered to be even more educational. You’re at the front lines shooting Nazis before they shoot you. Or, you’re a futuristic gladiator in a death match with robots. Either way, you’re playing a video game—and you might be improving your vision and other brain functions, according to research presented May 27 at a New York University conference on games as a learning tool.
“People that play these fast-paced games have better vision, better attention, and better cognition,” said Daphne Bavelier, an assistant professor in the department of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester. Bavelier was a presenter at a daylong symposium on the educational uses of video and computer games from NYU’s Games for Learning Institute. Students want more use of gaming technology. Results from Project Tomorrow's annual Speak Up survey reveal a disconnect between students', adults' views on technology in schools By Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor, eSchool News Read more by Meris Stansbury April 8th, 2008 Educators are largely missing out on what could be a huge opportunity to capitalize on their students’ appetite for electronic games and simulations to teach them about core curriculum topics, results from a new national survey suggest.
Project Tomorrow’s fifth annual Speak Up Survey, the largest annual survey addressing the attitudes and opinions of K-12 students, teachers, parents, and school administrators toward the use of technology in education, reveals that online or electronic gaming is one of the technologies that students use most frequently—and that educational gaming is one of the emerging technologies that students would most like to see implemented in their schools. Yet, only one in 10 teachers has adopted gaming as an instructional tool. Links: Engaging learners through games: Help or hype? Select games that allow room for self-paced exploration and experimentation, the author writes. “Engagement” has become a popular buzzword, as educators increasingly cite disengaged students as a problem that needs to be fixed. In this context, games are often trumpeted as the perfect tool for creating student engagement.
But what do we really know about how engagement works? What opportunities and risks do games present as tools for increasing engagement? There is no standard for what “engagement” means. How student engagement develops It is useful to break down student engagement into three core elements: interest, motivation, and attention. Engagement begins with interest, which refers to a student’s inclination to use content. A student’s interest evolves from “situational interest” to “individual interest.” In the context of learning games, this means that interest in the game’s theme and trappings ultimately can lead to interest in the underlying learning content. How Video Games Save Education. I know education and I know gaming. I’ve taught middle school students for the last fourteen years, and I have struggled as most teachers do to get the next generation to participate in their learning. Students sit glazed over with bored expressions as we tell them the way to learn is completely separate from their methods of interaction with the world.
Our education system was created near the beginning of the last century and had a purpose that is different than what we currently need and hasn’t been much revised since. As professionals we’ve done cooperative learning and differentiation; we offer scoring guides and samples and student choice, and our literature has been sanitized so hard that is colorless and tasteless if a little too sweet. None of this is part of the rest of our kids’ lives, where they become someone else, live through stories, or watch them unfold. What’s Wrong with Education- I Know, Call on Me!! It’s obvious, kids love games, adults too. Education needs games. The Seattle Times: Education: Scientists say video games can reshape education.
WASHINGTON — Scientists call it the next great discovery, a way to captivate students so much they will spend hours learning on their own. It's the new vision of video games. The Federation of American Scientists, which typically weighs in on matters of nuclear weaponry and government secrecy, declared Tuesday that video games can redefine education. Capping a year of study, the group called for federal research into how the addictive pizzazz of video games can be converted into serious learning tools for schools. The theory is that games teach skills that employers want: analytical thinking, team building, multitasking and problem solving under duress. Unlike humans, the games never lose patience. The idea might stun those who consider games to be the symbol of teenage sloth. Yet this is not about virtual football or skateboarding. There's already an audience: More than 45 million homes have video-game consoles.
"If we can't make the connection, shame on us," Kelly said at a news conference. Engaging learners through games: Help or hype? By Ben L. Grimley Read more by Contributor April 4th, 2013 Select games that allow room for self-paced exploration and experimentation, the author writes. “Engagement” has become a popular buzzword, as educators increasingly cite disengaged students as a problem that needs to be fixed. In this context, games are often trumpeted as the perfect tool for creating student engagement.
But what do we really know about how engagement works? What opportunities and risks do games present as tools for increasing engagement? There is no standard for what “engagement” means. How student engagement develops It is useful to break down student engagement into three core elements: interest, motivation, and attention. Engagement begins with interest, which refers to a student’s inclination to use content. A student’s interest evolves from “situational interest” to “individual interest.” Teens, Video Games and Civics. Video games provide a diverse set of experiences and related activities and are part of the lives of almost all teens in America. To date, most video game research has focused on how games impact academic and social outcomes (particularly aggression).
There has also been some exploration of the relationship between games and civic outcomes, but as of yet there has been no large-scale quantitative research. This survey provides the first nationally representative study of teen video game play and of teen video gaming and civic engagement. The survey looks at which teens are playing games, the games and equipment they are using, the social context of their play, and the role of parents and parental monitoring. Almost all teens play games. Video gaming is pervasive in the lives of American teens—young teens and older teens, girls and boys, and teens from across the socioeconomic spectrum. Fully 97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games.
Can a Video Game Make Someone Nice? As game-based learning grows in popularity, questions arise as to the effectiveness of games to change learner behaviors and attitudes. Questions arise, can video games influence attitudes? Can playing a video game improve customer service or even more basically, can playing a video game make someone "nice"? That is a question posed in 2010 by a pair of researchers from Germany and the United Kingdom named Silvia Osswald and Tobais Greitemeyer. They wanted to determine if playing a prosocial game would result in a person exhibiting prosocial behavior outside of the game environment. In other words, could playing a video game make a person nicer? To find the answer, the researchers conducted a number of interesting experiments placing the subjects of the experiments in positions to assist, or not assist others shortly after they played, a prosocial video game. Experiment One The aggressive game was Lamers, which is the exact opposite of Lemmings.
The neutral game was Tetris. Karl M. A study of the effects on gamers who play MMORPGs - Socialization, Making Friends, Being Social. What are the social effects of MMORPGs and how they are changing the world for the better? Can we find world peace through an MMORPG? Social leaders or losers? How many times have you heard negative connotations in regards to gamers, specifically those who play MMOs?
Things like "they have no life" or "they should get out more" or "don't you have any friends? ". Anyone who is into MMOs would have undoubtedly heard those and a multitude of other comments that are similar. Do Serious Games Work? Results from Three Studies. "Military recruits and entry-level civilians of today not only understand technology in everyday use; they expect it," says Mark Oehlert, the Department of Defense's director of Game and Simulation department at the Defense Aquisition University.
These young workers are digital natives, raised in an environment where they were surrounded by inexpensive, yet highly interactive systems. Today's college generation grew up with video games from infancy. With games and technology at their fingertips, they process more information faster, and in a much different way, than most older people do. The following study may help answer some of the questions now surrounding serious games—or games whose primary purpose is something other than entertainment, such as military training, education, physical therapy—and determine the relationship between the use of video games and learning as measured on standardized tests. Purpose of the Studies As recently as three years ago, Dr. Figure 1. Figure 2.