Hi Blog,
This week, we’re exploring gaming in education! This week was my favourite because I LOVE video/computer games, and utilizing them in an educational format can be quite beneficial – granted that your class has access to technology. We played “Interland” and “Got Bad News” in-class today which delved into topics about social media safety and online presence, which included who actually sees what you post as well as propaganda and the “fake news” phenomenon that is taking the internet by storm. It was really great to learn about online safety and have those immediate examples to go through the steps and thought processes of how people use social media platforms. My score for “Got Bad News” is below, and I’m pretty happy with how I did (but also disturbed at how easy it is to gain followers with Twitter bots). I can definitely see games, such as the ones above, being used in the classroom, and I’m thinking Grades 4 and above. It helps develop their awareness and have those thoughts in the back of their minds.
The features of games that make them effective are:
- The built-in opportunity to work on student’s fine-motor skills with typing, using a trackpad, and identifying different keys correlating to different moves a player can do.
- Developing that subconscious and conscious use of lessons learned in the classroom. For example, for middle school students you could work on digital literacy using the mindfulness mountain or the “get bad news” games to get students to think about the decisions they make. That being said, teachers would need to supplement these games with lots of discussion and follow-up, and even segment the amount of progress students would need to complete before taking a break.
- Develop a (hopefully) healthy relationship with technology and gaming and be able to explore the limits of how much exposure students can handle to technology.
That being said, there certain aspects about games (such as subject-focused escape rooms) that educators should be mindful of when trying to incorporate them into the classroom.
- Making sure each student uses computer time wisely (Chromebooks kind of help with this) and that students stick to the website that you want them to visit.
- Balance discussion and computer work to act as progress markers, so students can be prepared to actively engage in the teaching component of the lesson.
- Gaming may not work as a sole learning tool, because it may deter from the learning aspect of exploring the games. However, it would be better suited as a supplemental learning tool.
