by Eric Kloper, Scot Osterweil, Jennifer Groff and Jason Haas
Reasoning behind the use of games by Ross (7th grade subject area teacher)
· “education through meaningful realworld play and exploration.”
o Authenticity, gives motivation
· “teaches students about the skill of negotiation”
o Students gain interaction scenarios not available in live classrooms
· “teaches students how to solve problems collaboratively”
o Builds up social skills while giving problem solving skills
· teaches students to be mindful of their actions/impact on others
o Leads to cultural understanding and social implications
Reasoning behind the use of games by Hal& Kali (12th grade Physics teachers)
· “students gain conceptual understanding of these challenging concepts”
o Visual scaffolding of environmental understanding in Physics
· “creative“
o Self created solutions make for individualism and creativity
· “problem-solvers”
o simulations provide areas to work through problems for solution, can be considered the next best thing to using realia
· schema based education
o “demonstrate mastery of the concepts by altering the simulation based upon their understanding of how it works”
· Motivation
o “great synergy that elevated both of their instructional practices”
As a parent or fellow teacher I would support the inclusion of games for teaching
Because: Motivation of a students’ can lead to greater retention of information being instructed by the teacher. One of the greatest time consumer in a student’s life is games and online networking programs. If an instructor can bridge the gap of education and entertainment the instruction time increase, motivation increases, and competition for time decreases.
Just think now, “Children are establishing a relationship to knowledge gathering which is alien to their parents and teachers” (Green and Hannon, 2007, p. 38) while this is something that we will see transform over the next few years to become a ‘relationship to knowledge gathering which is understood by their parents and teachers’ because their P & T where exposed to the same forms of experiences. The transformations have serious positive implications for us in the space of education, with students becoming highly motivated with learning, while becoming critical of finding new ways to learn while entertaining; just as one can become critical of commercialization.
The advent of creating a student who is socially, culturally, and directionally sound can be programmed into a game. The social skills and leadership task can be designed into every corner. The transformation of gaming has changed from, click and go, games to games that give detail to information while education becomes interest; just as Kloper, Osterweil, Groff, and Haas described in their article with describing CIVILIZATION and WOW. Students can be crafted and educated will they are being entertained.
This is can be done in the same way documentaries on wild life made their way from the magazine to the classrooms and then into the home during prime time.
You have outlined the reasons given by those teachers and you seem to agree with their ideas.
ReplyDeleteHowever, "The advent of creating a student who is socially, culturally, and directionally sound can be programmed into a game" seems to be rather a lofty ideal. Gaming can certainly foster these ideals, but just like any learning, the outcomes for individual students is always rather unpredictable.
Dr. Burgos