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Can video games be used in education
Negative effects of playing video games
Negative effects of playing video games
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There is a crisis happening within our schools, as we have children that do not want to engage, while our intelligence is dwindling compared to the rest of the world. Games in the classroom, however, could be a tool to combat this, as they engage students, create positive thinking, and boost problem-solving skills.
One of the primary issues in our society today is the lack of caring. In the article "Gaming Has Huge Educational Potential", a poll shows that "71 percent of U.S. workers are not engaged in the workplace." This lack of engagement is rooted within our school, as the same article cites that "by high school only four in 10 students feel positive about learning."
As a high school student, I speak from personal expierence when I say that many of my peers are not engaged with their school or future. It is saddening and it needs to change, and games can do that. The total of gamers worldwide is one billion, and we need to learn from that.
Another highlight of games is their positive impact on the minds of students. Laura Devaney states that, "[Gaming] has a positive impact on brain activity, stimulating memory and retention, 'feel-good' areas,... as well as boosting motivation..." High School is a time of finding identity, dealing with bullying, and struggling with the teenage years. Video games in schools
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could motivate them to positive thinking and help further with our issues in schools. However, some critics of games in education believe it would either have no effect, or just negative ones.
Pamela Paul's dissenting article states that, "Multiple studies show that skills learned on-screen don't always transfer to real life. Is it really advantageous for GarageBand to replace school orchestras?" What Pamela's point fails to realize is that video games are not replacing all traditional elements of school, but rather being used as a tool to aid teachers in the classroom. Instead of using GarageBand to replace music class, why not use an interactive game on the SmartBoard to teach how notes and music sheets work, while using real
instruments? Our society is more advanced than ever. As such, we need our students engaged to think more critically and creativily than ever before. So much of our world as changed-Vehicles, Science, Internet, Retail-but education has barely even moved. When gamers spend almost all their time failing, but still come out stronger on top, that is a huge lesson for our students. Gaming can teach dedication, hard work, and creativity so we can advance our world even further.
Researchers, however, have found that gaming may not be completely bad for adolescents. A recent study by Paul J.C. Adachi and Teena Willoughby points out that video gaming may satisfy the same criteria for positive youth development as traditional organized activities such as sports, music or clubs. In direct contrast to this analogy, they demonstrate that there may be significant social benefits of gaming, that adolescents are motivated to play video games and that this type of play requires concentration and mental effort (Adachi and
Have you ever felt stuck? Wherever you are, it’s the absolute last place you want to be. In the book Into the Wild, Chris McCandless feels stuck just like the average everyday person may feel. Chris finds his escape plan to the situation and feels he will free himself by going off to the wild. I agree with the author that Chris McCandless wasn’t a crazy person, a sociopath, or an outcast because he got along with many people very well, but he did seem somewhat incompetent, even though he survived for quite some time.
With the introduction of in home entertainment, there is little more we have to do then turn on a television or plug in a game console to have instant satisfaction. We spend less time being active and more time in front of a screen. While this can be true for some people, others are using these same pieces of technology to further education in classrooms where funding may be lacking. Using a DVD as a classroom aid brings learning to life. Titles like Blue Planet and Life bring wild animals into the classroom at little cost. Video games have become a great tool for PE classes that do not have funding to purchase new sports equipment. Titles like Just Dance and Wii Sports can be used to get the exercise kids need and have even been used as a tool to lose weight. Technology can be used as a creative way to stimulate minds and bodies.
One way to excite students about learning is by using games. Game play can require students use higher-order thinking skills, where they are analyzing, creating and understanding the concepts at deeper level. Making games from content, or Gamification can be done by creating teams, scores, competitions, and rewards. Real life simulations incorporated into a game environment can create a powerful learning environment.
There are several negative stereotypes associated with video games and those who play them; some of these may often hold true. However, there are plenty of learning opportunities in video games. While the direct purpose of some games is to educate or train, other games that do not directly have this purpose can still become a learning experience for the player. As Ntiedo Etuk, president of the educational video game company Tabula Digital said, “The traditional view of video games has been that they are distractions from the task of learning” (Electronic Education Report 1). Video games are an effective tool for learning and retaining skills both inside and outside the classroom environment. The basic cycle of game play--the introduction to the game, game play, collaboration, improvement of these between each round, and evaluation at the end of the game (Klievink and Janssen 159)--are nearly parallel to the traditional classroom learning cycle of reading a textbook or listening to a lecture, taking a quiz, studying, focusing on items missed on the quiz, and taking a test or exam. Within this cycle, there are many opportunities to develop and perfect both educational, life, and occupational skills.
I can still see that there’s a lot of potential in the field of education Gamification. Clearly there should be a way to help kids learn from what they do best – play. This is why many educators are looking into a variety of new tools and techniques in Education Gamification. If we can harness/utilise the energy, motivation and sheer potential of their game-play and direct it toward learning, we can give students the tools to become winners in the real game of life.
In the gaming world, there are many different types of games: sandbox, shooters, puzzle, RPG, platform and many more. One thing that is not seen is educational games; they are there but are in the few. Many factors are the cause for the scarce amount of these games. They need to be educational in a certain field; corresponding with math, reading or science. Therefore, they need to be fun to encourage players to continue playing the game as well as to retain its teachings. Gamers today will mainly play games to have fun; thats why people today will rarely pickup educational genre because with the stigma that comes with those games as being boring or simple. This is about creating an educational program that can benefit students of all ages by increasing their literacy skills, teaching them grammar, improve word comprehension, and allow them to learn in a custom environment as desired by the player.
Since the beginning of time, humans are constantly attempting to create new forms of technology to make life easier. As time progresses, technology becomes exponentially more advanced. Only one hundred years ago cars were on the cutting edge, today they suggest ideas for fully electric, self-driving cars. Technology not only makes life easier, it also helps save lives. With today’s medical advancements, patients are able to receive organ transplants and countless other procedures. In addition, advanced communication networks allows international business to soar to new levels. Although technology has a many positive aspects, there are several negatives. An increase in technology use in children causes conflict with their social learning abilities.
American educational philosopher John Dewey once said, “ Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” Education is the foundation of a permanent lifestyle. Parents should desire for their children to have educational stability to build upon. Any concerned parent should want nothing but the best for their child as they are well aware of the new forms of child entertainment. Since the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, children in the United States have become subject to a new type of entertainment: video gaming (Nickson, 2010). Video games have become a big part of the average American household. Parents have begun to wonder how video games are affecting their children’s lifestyles.
Nowadays video games are a very prominent part of our society, being one of the biggest entertainment markets out there, despite how large the gaming market is, people mostly only view games as entertainment with little benefits aside from passing the time. Games are not just a fun way to whittle away time, but they are one of the most effective mediums to train our brain and skills. Video games are one of the most effective ways to transmit knowledge yet the public only sees educational games for this purpose, while others see the rest of the gaming industry transmitting harmful habits. Since gaming is such a major market having such views about games is harmful to the evolution of games. Video games are valuable tools that can be very beneficial
Playing games on hand-held can be beneficial as it can be enjoyable but self-motivated way for children to learn and play “play is intrinsic to children’s quality of life, it is how they enjoy themselves. It is also a key component of a healthy lifestyle”. Children’s games on hand held devices such as iPad, iPhone and tablets give children access to a vast wealth of information which can develop children mind and knowledge surrounding a broad spectrum of subjects. Educational video games that are age appropriate have an inventive way of simulating a young child mind and sustaining a young child’s attention, while they are engaging in the practice of learning and problem-solving; for example a literacy letter game expands a young child’s language and literacy skill in a visual character and audio sounds as way of simulating the mind help the child retain the information in certain part of their brain. Then if games ask questions to challenge the child understanding further such as find the right letter?
With the help of the same fundamentals and technology used for video games, schools can change the way our children grasp, and understand the world around us. Children and schools are not the only ones who are able to reap the benefit of gaming. A study from the University of Toronto, lead by Professor Ian Spence, demonstrated that adults are just as easily affected by video games as children. “Playing an action videogame, even for a relatively short time, causes differences in brain activity and improvements in visual attention (“Central Nervous System; Action videogames change brains”).” After studying twenty-five adults, tasked with playing a video game for 10 hours a week, Spencer had learned that those adults did not only have increased
Gamification of the classroom is a topic that has been slowly gaining attention. Moncada & Moncada (2014) define gamification as the pedagogical technique associated with game-based learning. Gamification is turning a classroom, a lesson, a review, a test into some type of game format. It’s the use of games or elements of games in a typical non-game application (Muntean, 2011). It is important to distinguish between game and play. Play is an unorganized experience. Games, on the other hand, are structured with rules (Burkey, 2015). Gamification is incorporating game elements to make education more interesting (Apostol, et al, 2013). Merriam-Webster tells us that this word is a new addition to the lexicon, but the concept is not new. Gamification is not just for the classroom, it can be used in the workplace and for customer incentives (Caponetto, 2014). It is an emerging trend, predominantly due to the modern technology available today. Therefore, gamifying a class has power. It can help engage the student, capture attention of the audience and drive competition swaying people’s behavior (Kim, 2015). McGonigal (2011) speaks about how gaming has become a billion-dollar industry. Our society is
This is unfortunate because of the massive potential in game based learning. A major benefit of using video games as educational tools is the vast number of young people who have played video games in the first place. So, if many students are already playing video games, why do very few educators try and use them for an educational purpose? One reason, among many is that video games are believed to dull the mind, when, in fact, educational games can sharpen the mind much more than any lecture could in the classroom. Even video games that are not made with the intent to teach certain parts of a child’s
The Pew Internet study of US teenagers found that few play alone and most join up with friends when gaming. It found that many used educational games to learn about world issues and to begin to engage with politics. The report also found that gaming had become an almost universal pastime among young Americans.