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

will someone please

[OrochimaruVoldemort]

think of the children

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

[Mastadex]

Funny you should say that, because I understood the concept of chemistry through a game called Atomix then from my grade school science teacher.

Re:General Rule With Prior Generations

[MrSteveSD]

Unless you are unlucky enough to be in Iraq, shooting snipers and throwing grenades is not much of a useful skill. You may also find that your skills are not actually so useful in the real world. Trying going to Iraq and rapidly jumping up and down in the hope of avoiding enemy fire :)

Re:General Rule With Prior Generations

[CSMatt]

The only thing I learned from the Oregon Trail was never to ford a river.

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.)

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).

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".

Math maze

[Andrew Kismet]

In my last year of Primary School, the single class computer was oversubscribed because of the one game it had: a simple maze game, where certain paths were blocked with 'enemies'. On the earliest levels, these enemies would bring up simple addition problems which had to solved in under 10 seconds. I can't recall the exact penalty for failure, but the motivation to get it right was there. On later stages, subtraction, multiplication, division and simple algebra became commonplace. The quickest way around a maze would take you through harder problems - longer routes would evade the problem but reduce your overall score for a level. For a few solid weeks, it became highly competitive amongst all the boys in our class.

Being brought up with games, both at home and in school, I see no reason to oppose them now. Provided they're correctly and professionally designed, appeal to both boys and girls, and are usable by both students and teachers, they'll help increase mathematical, literary, and scientific skills. The only thing they're unlikely to help with are more creative subjects, and I'm sure the spread of computers will be the ruination of handwriting everywhere.

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.

Re:Number Munchers anyone?

[damn_registrars]

I grew up in Minnesota - which is what the M in MECC stood for - and we had Number Munchers, Word Munchers, Oregon Trail, and a variety of other educational games. All for the trusty Apple IIgs. If anything like those is available when my own (as of yet unborn) children reach school age, I would also support those titles in the classroom.

One of the first logic-based problems I remember from school was a "lights-out" bonus round from one of the Munchers.

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.

Goes without saying?

[frovingslosh]

There's no mention of the games being fun, but that goes without saying

I take exception with this statement. Having seen many supposedly educational games, my impression is that most if not all of then are not fun, and many are not very educational. Many are an absolute waste and should be treated with the disdain that this article indicates that many parents have.

The Ultimate Educational Programs:

[TerranFury]

1 - gcc

2 - Firefox (w. Google & Wikipedia)

When their powers combine, you can build anything. It's like Legos on crack. And who doesn't like Legos?

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.

Portal

[bionicpill]

I say make them play portal to improve their reasoning skills, and teach them to think of creative solutions to complex problems. Also to keep them paranoid of rogue computers and robots, since that is a future threat our kids will surely have to face.

Google Earth

[Bayoudegradeable]

Using Google Earth to zoom in on cities of the world I print out a "snapshot," usually showing a key feature of a city; building, river, coastline, etc. I put it on the board and the kids get three guess each (a day) to figure out which city it is. They eat it up, often begging me to print up a new city as I get to school. Not really a "video game" but a use of amazingly cool software. For this instance, and perhaps it's true for using actual games, it is the competition of winning, of being the first to get the city that is driving many of my kids. I wonder how much the desire to win drives the "fun" behind academic video games.