Leading, Learning and Living in a Flat World

Student Learning and Video Games

November 23, 2008

It seems like every time I open an educational journal or read an educational website people are talking about gaming.  In case you have not noticed, the multi-billion dollar industry, video gaming, is pretty popular with our kids.  While video games seem to be engaging our youth, it seems like we as educators are doing the opposite.  According to the Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics only 21% of our 12th grade students find high school coursework interesting.  However, kids are spending hours of their free time working on video games.  Yes, I said working.  Games are problems, bearing some similarities to what is assigned in our classrooms.  The difference is that children actually enjoy the problems they face inside the video games, and in many cases they are learning valuable skills in the process.  Far too often we see our students give up after making a single attempt to solve the problems we create in our classrooms.  In the world of video games we see the opposite.  The context of the problems inside of video games seems to inspire children to put forth much greater effort.   The following quote from Julie Evans found in the “Digital disconnect divides students, educators” article in Nov/Dec ‘08 copy of eSchool News sums it up.  “Students see failure as a step in the process to competency with gaming.  We need to look, as educators, at how we’re defining failure.”

Another great quote to start us thinking is this one taken from the article “Video Gaming During Class” out of the May ‘08 Administr@tor Magazine.

“Video game designers have created such an engaging system that [kids] don’t care if they have to fail 100 times before they actually succeed,” says Etuk. “If you ask any teacher how she would feel about a child failing 100 times at algebra, but never giving up and even asking his friends to help him succeed at algebra, that teacher would say, ‘That’s the dream.”

What would happen if students took “Alligator Algebra Strike” created by Nintendo and they received credit from an accredited school in the process?   What would happen if those students started scoring higher on  state assessments?

An old quote goes something like this:

“You must wake up every morning and figure out how you can replace yourself.  If you do not someone else will.”

Entry Filed under: Project Based Learning, Rants. Tags: problem based learning, Project Based Learning, self-directed learning, video games.