Education experts today
see gaming as an potential tool to increase student engagement. I look no
further than my 10-year-old daughter as proof.
Having just spent the
last 30 minutes of a drive home reading her assigned book, she closed it and
went directly for her iPod to play some subway surfing thing. I asked why she
would stop reading when we had another 15 minutes to go before reaching home.
She shot back that her eyes were tired and she was falling asleep, unable to
concentrate on the book. Yet she had no trouble obtaining her high score in the
subway game.
The evolution of education is quickly following the evolution of publishing. In order to capture and hold the focus of students today, there must be more interaction than mere words on pages. Students need video, analytics, and interaction.
It should be no
surprise that electronic educational materials have quickly gone from simple
PDFs of printed pages to entire suites of adaptive learning products, which can include video games that use specific
learning objectives in which students perform actions.
And they are not all
games specifically designed for education. Some teachers are encouragingstudents
to play Minecraft, World of Warcraft, and even Angry Birds as part of the
learning environment.