Gaming and Education Part 1: My Perspective as Educator and Gamer

This is a topic that often is thrown around, but I wanted to contextualize it. It's not rare to hear many people boast that gaming has educational benefits, but I wanted to really emphasize this for two reasons:

I am an educator.

I am a gamer.

That said, as an undergrad in education, you tend to be surrounded by a lot of people who view gaming differently. Gaming does not have a specific focus, but does fall under a more general umbrella of “Technology and Learning”.

This is interesting to me, as technology often ignores gaming as a focus, and since many educators stray away from gaming as a medium to learning.

There are a couple of reasons for this, one of which is that gaming can be seen as either too intimidating, too unstructured (and unfocused), or too difficult to measure.

Yet, I think gaming has very interesting dimensions to learning. As technology in the classroom is a hot topic for education, the variety and implications of interactive learning (as I like to look at it as a common denominator) is one that is not often considered, and I want to use this blog to merge education and gaming in a general, but experienced manner.

I will break down the blog into a series of three posts:
1) My Perspective as Educator and Gamer
2) The Typical Concerns of Gaming and Education
3) The Importance of Gaming and Education Today

Before jumping into my history, I want to make it clear that this is just my thoughts on gaming and education, that are not entirely proven or properly studied as suitable to use as curriculum. I would love to one day design a curriculum, however, that uses gaming as a medium.

Part 1: My History with Gaming and Education

I did not grow up in this first world country (Canada represent!), but I did immigrate here when I was very young, and gaming came to me by accident.

Surely, I would have been a gamer eventually. But it all started with PC Gaming.

Early on, when my family and I were still struggling to get by, a friendly neighbour help us build a PC for office use. He was kind enough to install some free (but pirated) games, and this was my first venture into interactive media.

But I must be honest: gaming, if it is to be understood as an educational tool, needs to be structured properly. The games I played were admittedly not very helpful to my education, nor were they the best tools to improve my early skills of reading, writing, and curiosity.

Regardless, I was introduced to Grand Theft Auto, Mageslayer, Puzzle Bobble, Vanguard, and surely some other titles I am forgetting.

Having no use of technology before this, I was astonished at the interactivity. It's a wonder and excitement that I know I cannot replicate anymore. It's a milestone, really, to be introduced to gaming as a child. But these were not educational games. They were controversially violent, and definitely not intended for children. This is an important distinction, as it introduces questions like, "what are educational games?", "how valuable is an educational game to developing education?", and "how do we utilize current games into educational purposes?"

It's something I think today's generation will take for granted, as they are introduced very early on to gaming through tablets and phones, as parents use simple games to keep children busy. Technology dependency has come along way.

Regardless, I managed to learn some basic language I would not otherwise have come across, including crass language. I remember calling someone a bitch when I was very young, a word I learned from Grand Theft Auto.

These games early on show that gaming as education must be carefully crafted, however. Not all games are purposed to educate, and many can be destructive or incredibly inferior to some existing tools to teach.

However, somewhat soon after, I got my hands on one of those discs that had multiple DOS games installed onto it. And in this, there are a few educational games that really stuck out:

Hugo's Adventures: A puzzle/adventure game where you must enter text to interact with the world around you. Here is an image of the game:
http://www.mrbillsadventure...

You come upon a haunted house. The front door is locked, there is a pumpkin on the porch. A lantern above the door. A window.

Naturally, you want to get inside. But how? You enter text.

> Open door | DOOR IS LOCKED
> Knock | THERE IS NO ANSWER
> Look at Pumpkin | IT LOOKS SUSPICIOUS
> Pick up Pumpkin | OKAY
> Smash Pumpkin | A KEY FALLS OUT
> Use Key on Door | THE DOOR OPENS

What would you have entered? What would you have entered if you were 5 years old? 7? 10?

Keep in mind that as an immigrant learning English, I did not have a strong vocabulary. Nor did I understand how to get past this simple puzzle for ages. It's a patience that was fueled by simple amazement at playing a video game. It's a patience lost on today's gamers who have easy access to guides both in the game and out. I had nothing but time and experimentation.

But this game has an educational value when I look back on it. Not only did it teach me to problem solve some very basic scenarios, but it taught me to use some creativity, develop and use my vocabulary, and think outside the box: not all command inputs were understood, forcing me to use different phrasing, for example. This is an interaction that promotes creativity, flexibility, and encourages play. It's a little different than uninspired pencil and paper.

This is educational. This is something that can be used in a classroom. This is something that can be used recreationally, yet in a manner that develops a student's skills. This is an alternative approach that has superior benefits to traditional methods of similar goals.

Word Rescue: A platformer in which you run around a 2D world, looking for words to spell out, while matching images with said words. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/oEtLL...

Simple enough: you learn new words, and find the write letters to spell them out. The difficulty range is designed to target different ages, so that more complex words are available for higher literacy levels.

Math Rescue: Just like Word Rescue, with added Math problems you have to solve: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/NW_8F...

A little more complex (at least for my mathematically challenged self), but nonetheless, a great game that sprinkled math problems around a video game. As a child, learning these independently is intimidating and mundane. But in a video game scenario, it is a challenge that is fun, and a secondary objective that does not directly feel like schoolwork. There is a criticism that can be levelled here, mainly that a child shouldn't be softened to think that homework should be fun, or that a child should be shielded from “challenging” homework. And I agree with that.

However, I think this is something that I want to expand on in Part 2 of this blog series. For now, I will say that using interactive gaming like this offers a relaxed alternative for students that may otherwise struggle with learning.

Gameboy Color Games and RPGs: There is something I really miss about the charm of older games. Today, gaming is a large entertainment medium that uses voice acting to appear AAA quality. But I recall a volume of text in older RPGs that were phenomenally useful in assisting in literacy. Older PC RPGs are probably notorious for this, though I myself did not play them. Gameboy Color games were my gateway to reading a lot of text, Pokemon being a big example. While there isn't anything inherent in promoting education here, it is an example of games that used worlds and themes to introduce uncommon words and language that contributed to literacy development.

These are four examples of the medium that were very early iterations of educational games. A lot has changed today with gaming in terms of offering an educational assistance, and this will be looked at in Part 3.

But I wanted to show here was that these games offered an alternative supplement to education. It in no way really replaces the importance of the classroom environment, but it showed early promise of how one can use gaming to promote some skills.

To a child like me, my language barrier made me especially intimidated in the classroom, but coming home to play these games provided a positive environment for me to learn and play.

Lastly, I want to talk about myself as an educator:

In the modern classroom, technology is often brought up as a tool to incorporate into some education approaches. Kids today are coming into the classroom with often a stronger understanding of technology than teachers. And games today are so varied and socially connected, that there is opportunity to see how games like Math Rescue evolved today. Are there modern educational games that are advanced enough to prove useful for education? What are kids playing today? How does one introduce gaming while emphasizing educational skills? Literacy and math skills are often huge, and gaming may be an inferior way to promote these skills, but can we change that? Are there other skills students should be developing and that schools should be promoting? Skills like social skills, creative problem solving, and creating games I would say, are also important. And I do believe here that games can strongly develop these skills.

These are topics not often focused on in my undergrad, but ones that are brought up when focusing on gaming. However, I have often found that many don't think this critically about gaming, because gaming does not have a connotation associated with education. This is mostly because it's difficult to distinguish between games like Grand Theft Auto and Scribblenauts, since most don't touch games and know only of the former. Indeed it is also the case that kids prefer the former, and view gaming as entertainment primarily.

For now however, this was a brief look at my own personal history of using games with educational value. There are challenges today involving how games can be used, and if they should be used in classrooms/schools. But I wanted to establish these issues, while discussing how some very early games incorporated education skills, while outlining the present day focus of technology in the classroom. Kids are as varied as the games we play, and there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to education. Games, however, can provide useful for developing a variety of skills. And as gaming matures and is looked at critically, it's time that we try to structure some merit around interaction and learning.

-Alpha

[s45gr32]

Very nice blog

[DefenderOfDoom2]

Yeah , great blog , I would love to hear NORM CHOMSKY opinion on video games.

[iceman06]

Nice read. I, too, am an educator. Over the past several years, I have seen the acceptance of the idea of games as a teaching tool increase. Many of the educational programs that I have worked with include various mini-games and game-type segments. Especially for younger students, this increases their desire to actually want to interact with these programs and even excel due to the dangling carrot of a score to beat. However, as a primary source, it still remains a bit argumentative at the moment. As you said, you must be careful and focus on WHAT you are trying to achieve...which is basically what you must do for any lesson plan. As games technology increases, I believe that the space will open up a bit more. I remember seeing that AR game Wonderbook and thinking about the applications as an educational tool. AR and VR could bring entire worlds to students at the click of a button and be excellent supplements to any lesson. (much like we use video today) But, as always, it requires an open-minded approach to learning from the higher ups and...as we know...that is often NOT the case.

[-Alpha]

Wonderful :)

Yes, I wanted to cover gaming now with how it can be applied to learning. Especially since, like you said, we have new tools with Wonderbook, AR, and VR. The technology these things offer are very practical compared to what we used to have, and they can open up important social and practical skills related to developing children and aiding/inspiring a positive learning environment

Thanks!

[Picnic]

Here's an idea- because games can sometimes be useful in appreciating the world even more.

You play a game and then you try to experience a real life equivalent of that kind of environment.

Like you play Bioshock and then look for an art deco place.

Or vice versa. But in a natural way.

[DefenderOfDoom2]

To Pinic , just wanted to say i like your comment . Cool way to look at the world . I remember going into buildings and thinking about levels from the oringial DOOM games from the mid 90's