The Modesto Bee has an article this week on the use of video games in education:
Got game? More and more schools using video games as teaching tools
The article talks about how video games are an integral part of many student’s lives and that this familiarity with these platforms can be used to teach in addition to entertain. A recent Pew Research Center student is quoted:
“The Pew Research Center reported in September that 97 percent of youths ages 12 to 17 play video games, and half said they played “yesterday.” Time spent glued to the screen is often particularly high in wired, affluent communities such as Fairfax, Va., where a survey this year showed that almost three out of four students play video games or use the computer an hour or more each night for things not related to school.”
Two years ago when I started the Pacific Rim Exchange program at Modesto City Schools, I encountered a lot of skepticism about the value of virtual worlds and educational gaming. Today, with the current fiscal crisis in California and tightening of school budgets, increased pressure is being placed to find applications for classroom use to allow for specific programs to continue with shrinking budgets and enrollments. Several of the districts and SCOE who are partners in the Stanislaus Virtued project are looking at virtual world applications for AP classes, especially in rural settings where they are not offered now, and for unique languages like Japanese or Chinese.
Things are certainly changing, as stated in the article:
“There is a revolution in the understanding of the educational community that video games have a lot of what we need,” said Jan Plass, co-director of the Games for Learning Institute, based at New York University and funded by Microsoft to research how video games can help learning.
This is a great article that gives a good snapshot of where we are today with these technologies on campus.
