Gaming & Education--Part 1

The implications for gaming in education are huge. There has been so much research around gaming and education in the last ten years noting how much children can learn through games, that it still baffles me that parents and some educators can't see the value in games. One of the most prominent proponents of games and education is the Arizona State Professor of Literacy studies, James Paul Gee, who wrote the influential book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Literacy and Learning back in 2003. In the 2009 article, "Welcome to Our Virtual World," (Educational Leadership 66, No. 6) written by Gee and Michael Levine, the Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, the authors note that students are bored at school and that we need to motivate them in new and different ways. They state that games involve complex thinking, problem solving and this is even tied to language and understanding vocabulary words and concepts. They note, "Many young people today also design and produce media, often collaboratively, in a popular culture that stresses production and participation, not just consumption and spectatorship." Everyone is an expert, a professional in this digital age on some aspect of content. Gee and Levine state, "Digital media holds out the potential to hone the skills necessary for success in our globalized world."

Gee and Levine encourage teachers to help their students gain the necessary skills needs for 21st century jobs. They suggest doing Webquests with kids as well as allowing students to do podcasts, play good video games and more. The authors state, "To leverage the potential of digital media to transform classrooms and motivate students, teachers must become tech savvy...They merely need to gain a basic level of comfort with technical learning and be open to opportunities to gain expertise in not just using--but also producing with--such technologies as YouTube, blogs, and social networking sites." Lastly, the authors list some excellent resources for teachers--a few of which are listed below:
*Classroom 2.0 Wiki (http//wiki.classroom20.com)
*Route 21 (www.21stcenturyskills.org/route21)
*Edutipia (www.edutopia.org)