Adults Too Quick to Dismiss Educational Gaming?

netbuzz writes "A new survey finds that more than half of K-12 students believe that educational video games in school would help them learn (no surprise), although only 15% of teachers and 19% of parents agree. Adults might not want to scoff, however, because 11% of teachers are already using video games in class and they report great results. 'Only 3% of elementary school students say they do not play video games of any kind. Students surveyed say learning via video games would help them better understand difficult concepts, become more engaged in the subject matter and practice skills. There's no mention of the games being fun, but that goes without saying.'"

Comments

General Rule With Prior Generations

[eldavojohn]

I don't know about your parents but mine were rife with "I didn't have it, why do you need it?" mentality. Luckily I convinced them to get a computer but it wasn't until I moved out that they had the internet ...

It's about breaking down barriers and proving that games can be more useful than just leisure and entertainment. Collaboration, teamwork, and problem solving are just a few things that come from games without the edutainment factor predesigned into them.

Re:General Rule With Prior Generations

[spun]

Are you trying to be funny or are you just unimaginative? There are more types of games than just FPS. Many strategy games can teach economic concepts, math, and critical thinking. RPGs could be used to teach history; I'm sure many people remember more about pioneer life from playing Oregon Trail than they do from history lessons. Games can very easily teach physics, math, logic, chemistry, biology, and much more.

Re:General Rule With Prior Generations

[eln]

I think it even goes beyond that though, because the elementary school kids of today have parents that grew up in the video game era. Many of these parents certainly grew up playing video games and should know that video games are not as harmful as their parents thought they were. Many of them probably remember playing games like Oregon Trail, so they would know that games can be at least somewhat educational.

However, I think especially when you're dealing with young parents, they tend to not really know how to react to these sorts of things, so they by default fall back on what their parents thought.

Growing up in the '80s, most parents of that time felt that video games had absolutely no value, and their use for any purpose was to be actively discouraged. While today's parents may not see games as pure evil, they are still harboring a lot of this latent fear of gaming that was hammered into them by their parents, even though they themselves played video games quite a lot and (probably) didn't end up as sociopaths.

I think people tend to be very over-conservative about these things when they are just starting out as parents, because they are terrified of doing anything that might "ruin" their kids. Sort of like how people keep the hand sanitizer around at all times with the first child, but by the time the third or fourth rolls around, they clean the pacifier by sticking it in their own mouths for half a second.

Re:General Rule With Prior Generations

[AKAImBatman]

Or perhaps the parents of today remember the whole Edutainment boom and what a load of crock it was? We tried the idea of mixing games and education. Save for a few specific instances*, the games did a much poorer job at teaching over traditional methods.

And I think that's where part of the problem lies. The summary suggests that some teachers are having wonderful results with games. Yet I guarantee you that with that game time, a Blue Back Speller, and a few sheets of number tables, I could teach those kids far more than the game will ever teach them.

Of course, my methods may not appeal to the "new math" crowd, or the anti-phonetics crowd. None the less, I've seen the results of a variety of methods, and the traditional, straight-to-the-point methods of phonics and number tables are far more effective.

I'm not against the idea of games as teaching aides, I simply haven't seen very many effective implementations of the concept. And besides, most kids can be excited by practical applications of their knowledge over trying to make the learning process more "fun". Give them a reason to learn, and you'd be surprised how fast they soak up that knowledge!

* I did have good luck with my son both on Fraction Fever and Odell Lake. (Though we used the latter as reading practice.)

Re:General Rule With Prior Generations

[Qzukk]

As for math, eh, addition and subtraction pretty much covers it in today's games.

Math stuff is overrated anyway. Now, looking at the weather report for the week to determine how much raw material you should buy, then figure out what you're going to charge for a cold cup of lemonade, that's a real lesson for you. Oh, and you have $10, how many bags of sugar can you buy at $2.15 a bag, how many lemons can you buy at $1 a pound, how many small/medium/large cups you can buy... and then how many cups can you make if you adjust your recipe just so, and will anyone drink that nasty mess? (Oh wait, did I say that math was overrated?)

Someone should make a lemonade stand mod for grand theft auto. Set up your stand, buy some sugar and lemons, sell lemonade, and take a flamethrower to the little kid's stand across the street. Educational AND fun!

I remember math games as a kid

[cephah]

I remember those games where the math game gave you a series of equations and once they were all solved it would tell you how many you got correct and your overall statistics and speed. Was about 10 years ago but it really helped me a lot. With the amazing progress in computer science these 10 years I imagine if someone made something similar, maybe wrapped a better interface around it with more interactivity, kids would really benefit from it.

Alternatively: kids prefer games to regular ....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

... studying. Of course kids will pick the fun option.

I don't really care *how* kids learn, so long as they really are learning.

Far too many educational methods (both regular and games) are ineffective as teaching tools. Many so-called educational games just teach nothing (yes, there are many that are effective).

Number Munchers anyone?

[Gat0r30y]

This game was bad ass. I never thought of it as educational as a kid, but I certainly wouldn't have any problem with kids playing that in school.

Re:Number Munchers anyone?

[maglor_83]

We also had the first iteration of Carmen Sandiego games for geography, which I have to say is a great way to learn about the world.

Not so much these days. You have to fly to Moscow when she drives away in a car with a red flag.

Ummm....

[Otter]

Adults might not want to scoff, however, because 11% of teachers are already using video games in class and they report great results.

Is the second half of that simply made up by the submitter? It's certainly not in the link and I don't see it in the link's link.

Take that out and this basically comes down to "Parents don't think children should have candy for breakfast; children disagree".

Re:Ready for this..

[fructose]

I'll be damned if my kid hasn't picked up some from her Leapster. All the games have some educational content, and she loves the animal games. They use a reward system like XBox Achievements to get them motivation to play more mini games. And the mini games are things like fill in the missing letter, and simple math. My daughter is 5 and she loves it. There are plenty of games to pick from too, so there are options for everyone.

non-video games can be educational too

[OrangeTide]

Back when I was in school we played a lot of games in the classroom as part of the curriculum. Especially in the lower grades. Sure video games can be an educational tool, but so can the non-video variety. And games that allow a large number of students to participate at once have their own unique dynamic that I think every kid should experience. And it's not something you can really get with a video game. Sorry, but an MMO is not really the same as 20 students in a class room all trying to play a game together in their noisy and chaotic way.

I learned pretty well...

[austinian]

...something that the teacher wasn't even teaching, and that I wouldn't be taught for near 5 years. In second grade, I was able to teach myself algebra by analyzing problems and their solutions as posed by an educational game that we were encouraged to play (for its arithmatic game, but that was too easy). If someone had then taught me the order of operations and negative numbers, I would have had a much better start in my math education. Sadly, this did not happen, they taught multiplication tables instead, ugh. The point of this is that if a child likes doing something, and there is opportunity to use this to teach them something, this should be employed to do so. I was eager to zap those math problems as they went across the screen, and the algebra was offered as a higher difficulty level, so I tried it. These tools can be used to introduce topics before they are taught, to provide exposure to a problem before the proper analysis is taught, and can be continually used to hone the skills involved in learning the analysis.

Still have a long way to go

[noric]

As an a intern for a major game development company, I had an opportunity to sit in on a debate between a university professor and the company President (2006). The professor's area of specialization was in psychology and serious games; ie he was the 'Pro games in school' fellow. What I remember most from the debate was the President firmly shooting down the idea of ever producing any serious (educational) games. In his opinion there is no money in education.

So the point is we're at a standstill. Education authorities don't believe in the teaching power of games, and the games industry believes there is no money in education. It is no small wonder games aren't widely accepted in curricula yet given no one has bothered to throw a budget at the issue.

Me, I remember being an 12 year old kid trying to explain to my father how MUDding was extremely educational. I think in within 10 years someone will gamble on a high-budget education project and come out extremely profitable.

Games shouldn't teach "facts"...

[7Prime]

Educational methods that revolve around memorization, be it in games or anything else, are usually very ineffecient. Teaching facts is along the lines of giving a man a fish instead of teaching him how to do so. Once you learn that fact, it does little to nothing to your overall education in other areas.

The most effective teaching methods involve giving students the tools to be able to learn how to learn. Most learning will be done on a student's own through exploration, even if much of it is passive.

That's where video games come in. Legend of Zelda may not teach you Mayan history, it might not show you, directly, how to do algebra, but it develops problem solving and creative thinking skills in fairly complex ways that will make a student's job in learning those things FAR easier. Zelda isn't even an "education game" but its innate problem solving is more involved that almost any story problem you'll encounter in HS, and kids play Zelda in grade school. The problem is, it's not easilly quantifiable because there are no hard-and-fast facts being learned, but as I said, fact learning is one of the least inefficient educational methods. Sure, facts must be taught, but there should be much less emphasis on fact learning and more emphasis on critical thinking skills.

Meanwhile, over the course of Zelda, or even an adventure FPS, RPG, or most other modern games, you're reading a lot of on-screen text, you're doing mathmatical computation for stats, puzzles, and the like... and all surrounded by various time limits that act as drill. And to top it off, it's fun and doesn't FEEL like work. What more could an educator ask for?

Re:I didn't have it, why do you need it and not PE

[hardburn]

Except that PE today consists largely of simple exercises and the most non-competitive games you can find, because it'd be a real tragedy to tell a child that they might not be good at something.

And there is a HUGE market for them

[Frenchy_2001]

Educational Gaming is *ALREADY* here and it's already making a killing in the market, not only for kids but particularly for adults.
Some of the best sellers on the Nintendo DS could easily be classified as Edutainment. Games like Brain Age, Flash Focus or Brain Coach are all games that will also teach you to use your abilities. More recently, games like my French/Spanish Coach or My Word Coach are designed to improve your mastery of your language or start on a new one.
Those "games" work by making the necessary repetition of teaching (especially for language) less tedious than "classic" methods. After all, it does not really matters how little Johnny learnt to associate head with cabeza, it just needs to be drilled into his mind until the association is automatic. If it takes simple games to take the tedious part away, I'm all for it. I personally "play" My Spanish Coach and this has been the easiest method for me to get motivated and learn that language (YMMV).
The DS has been a revolution on that front, seen as a very nice gadget by lots of adults on top as a game console for kids. The touch screen interface blends the genre and allows new type of software for such a cheap gadget (~$100, far cheaper than a pda and much wider spread).

Check some of the games available on DS. Lots of choices.