If I were to make a list of skills that I lack video gaming would be close to the top. After learning Nintendo 64 at a young age from my brother and experiencing defeat repeatedly I never found the motivation to move on to another gaming system. Controllers got tricky with more than one joystick and way more buttons then seemed needed, I was at a major loss. Because of this lack of video game literacy I had never really considered using video games in my classroom.
To me video games are leisure activities to be taken on outside of school hours. I am by no means saying that there is no educational value, because there is, even non-educational games teacher children about problem solving and thinking ahead, however I'm not sure I've been convinced of there place in the classroom.
I looked into the educational computer game Caduseus. While I could see its value in getting kids more involved in the scientific process, it seemed to be to lengthy of a game to allow time for it in the classroom. In this game you are told about a scenario where a contagion has spread across this fictional world and our main character was asked to analyze phlegm samples of the sick to try and find the contagion. After examining many samples our main character cuts her finger on a slide and has the bright idea to look in the blood samples for the contagion. This is where the game begins, you are looking at a slide and have to match all the microorganisms that you see, the assumption being that the non-matching organisms could be our contagion.
While the game could get students interested in science and the research process I think it would be a game I would suggest for them at home. Maybe I would research a variety of educational games and make a list for them to play at home instead of watching TV or something. However I think that the game is a little to slow for me to want to spend my time on it during the class period.
I think one thing we could have discussed more in class was the different ways that video games could be used - at home, in class, when a student finishes early, etc. It might not be appropriate to spend 30 minutes class-time on a video game, and a lot of these games don't make sense in 5-minute chunks. The question is then whether they should be assigned as homework (which would be hard for the students without computers at home, who might get dirty looks from librarians for using public computers for video games). I don't have any answers, but you definitely raise some interesting questions!
ReplyDeleteLauren,
ReplyDeleteI totally feel your pain with Nintendo64 being the only gaming system I ever had (until the Wii). And I was horrible at pretty much every game except Mario Tennis. Luckily, I didn't have any brothers to beat me all the time, so I actually thought I was good for awhile :) I, too, struggle with whether or not I think video games have a place in the classroom. Especially in math and science, I find technical equation learning and doing actual problems in class with the teacher to be the most beneficial, so I'm hard pressed to find a reason to incorporate a video game into my class. However, I think that a lot of students find math to be "boring", so incorporating video games might be the best way to get them interested in the material. Obviously, this is going to require a lot more research on my end, since I'm a little behind the times on the video game spectrum, but it might help encourage students who are struggling in math!
Morgan
Hi, Lauren,
ReplyDeleteI was also thinking about how much time should be set aside during a class for video games. Thinking back, I think most of the time my classes allowed for video games was the time we had after we had finished what we were supposed to be doing and others were still working. For the younger grades, we also were able to play video games when it was raining and we had to have indoor recess. I don't really remember having assignments that required us to play a video game, and I agree with Naomi that to do so would raise all sorts of equity issues. I know the argument is always that if a student doesn't have a computer they can always go to the local library or something, but I know that when I was younger, if I had to go to the library to play a video game, I would have disliked that assignment very much. I get going to a library to do research, but if I had to play a game on a computer at a library, I would almost be embarrassed to have people walk behind me and see that I was playing games.