Games work in education. 

You can not stick a kid in front of a computer for an hour and expect something magical to happen.  There has to be planned, deliberate, and conscious teaching. While this is true for all technology use in education, it is especially true for the use of computer games in the classroom. 

I’ve been using games successfully in my classroom for years, and I’ve been helping other teachers use games in their classrooms.  There are specific circumstances which need to coalesce in order for games to work in education.  But games work. 

Look at the energy, enthusiasm, and excitement our kids show. I am stunned at the discrepancy between how kids respond to traditional instruction, and how they interact with computer games.  It’s amazing to see how excited they are about games, how motivated they are, how much work they are willing to do! Even kids labeled as “not interested” in school or even “low achievers” display a very different profile when talking about video games.

Enter common sense.

Am I saying we should forsake good teaching and assessment with Team Fortress 2? Of course not.  But I am saying there is a disconnect between adults and kids; and this disconnect is defined by multimedia, television, and the internet.

Let’s meet our students where they play.

Absolutely correct. As an “older”  classroom teacher it took a little while to understand how and when to use games-all kinds of games, not just computer-in my classroom. However, once I did, they have become an ingrained part of my lesson planning. Games teach and encourage students to use critical thinking skills, apply knowledge, and be an active participant, not a receptacle for information. And don’t forget, our military uses “games” -again, all kinds, but esp. computer, to train it’s soldiers.

And don’t forget, our military uses “games” - again, all kinds, but esp. computer, to train it’s soldiers.

Thank you for mentioning this.  I want to address the military uses games to train it’s soldiers issue. The game Americas Army is a great example. Americas Army is a team-based FPS where soldiers must follow rather strict rules of engagement and work cooperatively to achieve their goals. America’s Army is used as a recruiting tool for the United States Army.

The logic:

The military is, at it’s foundation, a violent organization. The military uses video games for training.  ergo all video games will train our kids to become violent sociopathic soldiers.

Why is this false? Because gamers know the difference between the game and the real world. People are capable of making that distinction. There is a term called the magic circle which describes the unique meta-space that people enter when they play a game. From wikipedia:

All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the ‘consecrated spot’ cannot be formally distinguished from the play-ground. The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc, are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart (emphasis mine).

Yes, the military uses video games to train soldiers, but this does not equate to games being inherently capable to illicit violence by playing them.

Thanks for the reply!

Thanks, Bill, for clarifying my remarks. I did not mean to in anyway imply that games taught violence-or just that using games for education has a great deal of precedence! When I wrote that, I was actually thinking about computer simulation for pilots!