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Educational Benefits Of Video Games
Video games improving education
Educational Benefits Of Video Games
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In recent years the video game market has been rising. With the new advancements with technology the limitations are slowly disappearing, what was once unimaginable is now possible.
Today’s youth is playing video games for enjoyment more than ever before. The market has even started making its way into classrooms, in the form of instructional mediums. These games are specifically made to increase knowledge and skills, some are even meant for enjoyment but double as educational. The marketers of video games have picked up on this fact and have been working on making more suitable games. There are many different aspects of this new technique of teaching that still needs to be discovered.
There are many different reasons as to why educators are supplementing games into their classrooms. Simpson & Clem (2008) stated that the reason as to why this generation learns differently is because they have grown up in a digital world. This has influenced students to learn and think differently than the previous generations. Simpson (2006) stated that 92% of children between 2 and 17 play video games. Also stated is that video games are used on a daily basis in children’s lives. Gordon (2010) wrote that students are lacking motivation to learn, causing them to fail state tests. Also stated by Gordon students were more engaged in class, practiced more skills, and completed their homework. As stated before students use video games in their daily lives, which is related to the way they learn. Simpson (2008) stated that students lean more if they are actively engaged. This in fact has been proven through an increase of test scores. According to Din & Calao (2001) wrote that students who had low focus were less focused when a teacher was teaching, and more focus when computers were used. Rice (2007) wrote that educational video games increase team building, experiential learning, and understanding of abstract concepts. As society, education, and technology change video games for educational purposes will be more prevalent in classrooms.
The key to using video games in the classroom is proper implementation. Gordon (2010) gave tips as of how to properly implement games into a school environment. Also stated was that the right game must enforce what students need to learn and should be parallel to the state standards. According to Gordon (2010) there are many questions that need to be answered for proper implementation; these questions are who, what, when, and where.
Video games do not make us more intelligent. They may however, make us more prone to violence and sex. Video games are preventing us from screening out distractions and making thinking deeply a difficult task. Our brains become overwhelmed when multitasking. Moreover, Johnson states “... a modern video game can take forty hours to complete”. Forty hours keep kids from homework and as Rachael Rettner states in livescience, “The results show that boys given a PlayStation II are slower to progress in their reading and writing skills and have more learning problems reported by their teachers than those not given a system”. The sole reason studies come back positive for video games being productive is due to the fact that they test a regular video gamer with a non-gamer. Regular video gamers will do better in the study because the more they play, the better they get. Not many realize the effect of these “fully realized imaginary worlds”, it is making it harder for people to differentiate their virtual life with their real
Imagine for a moment, a world of death. For 200 years your family has been sealed away with a thousand other people, to protect you from the dangers outside. Now your father has disappeared, and it’s up to you to find him. After a harrowing escape from your subterranean home, you walk through a tunnel to the outside world, past dead bodies, stretched out in front of the door, as if to say “don’t leave us out here to die!” As you walk through the gate to the outside, and as your eyes slowly adjust to the sun you have never seen, a wasteland emerges before you. The world is devastated, destroyed and annihilated. Broken twisted hunks of metal lie next to a sign on the side of the mountain saying “scenic overlook” on your right, the broken remains of the interstate bridge stand as a monument to a destroyed culture. Petrified trees are all that remains of the local fauna. Off in the distance, all that remains is destruction. While you may think of this stunning visualization of a wonderful novel, this is actually one of the opening scenes from Todd Howard and Bethesda Game Studios’ “Fallout 3.”
Key Changes in the Video Game Industry The first wave of home video games was launched nearly 30 years ago. By the early 1980s, this electronic entertainment medium had emerged as a cultural phenomenon, thanks to classics such as Asteroids, Centipede, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man. The world of video games has, of course, changed drastically since then. For starters, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are now the key players in the console industry, having replaced Atari, Coleco, and Mattel for those top spots. Advances in technology are making game worlds more realistic and interactive than ever before.
Video Games have been around for over thirty years now. A lot have changed in the way programs work. When they first came out Video Games weren't that powerful because the hardware couldn't support it. Now the possibilities are almost endless. Games have changed so much. From Games like Asteroids that was made in 1979. With Asteroids being only a small program with some computations going on.
Video games have come a long way. They have evolved from the simple game of Pong into a complex, multi-platform, multi-genre, multi-billion dollar industry.
Tommy scuffles through the front door, drops his book bag on the floor and plops down on the couch with a scowl across his face. As his PlayStation fires to life, he replays scenes from the day in his head of being shoved into the lockers by Billy, unable to form the words to impress Sussie, and sitting alone at lunch listening to the popular kids laugh and joke, ignoring him as if he did not exist. No one understands him. No one cares about him, because he is not strong, charming, or popular. All that is soon avoided as Tommy dives into a world where he controls everything and everyone either fears or loves him. If he fails, all he must do is reset. Here he can be anything he wants, and he can do and have it all.
Presently, video games aren’t merely toys that negatively influence the youth. They have become an alternative means for people to learn and train for work. Games teach values and essential information, and motivate its players to achieve goals. Soldiers and doctors benefit from video games as well. The collaboration of game developers and educators helps improve the quality of educational games. At present, as technology progresses, one can truly see that video games have become an important factor in learning.
...the ideas that are taught in schools. Games also need to intermix instruction with demonstration. This is a big difference from the basic way of learning in school, which is memorize and regurgitate. Demonstrating shows the student what it looks like and they retain the content longer.
Today, video games have become the preferred choice of entertainment among children and teenagers. Research done in 1998 has shown that kids who own video games spend an average of 90 minutes a day playing them. Clearly, the video gaming industry is a profitable one. With the increasing competition between gaming companies, the advancement of technology and content of games began to change. One of the most significant and concerning changes in gaming is graphics.
Video games have been around about 50 years and they contribute a big part of the U.S. economy. People interact with video games every day throughout different ways, such as cell phone devices, computers, consoles or whatever which has a screen on it. In fact, it has always affected people’s lives. However, not so many people understand the benefits of video games. With video games, people can not only relieve themselves from stress and suffering, but it also improves people’s social experiences while they are exchanging and absorbing knowledge with other people; more than that, people can learn many other things from video games which can help them to achieve great things in lives.
Video games are no longer the uprising form of media that ill informed parents and scientists used to fear; video games are now an established form of entertainment that is just as universally accepted as film or literature. The difference between videogames and mediums like film and literature is that they do not have the higher value that books have in exercising the mind and communicating information, nor do they have the value that films have to intellectually challenge an audience and to make people think. This is the general argument that can be heard voiced by leading intellectuals in various field as well as parents who are rising young children; both claim that videogames
Many people believe that video games change people and mislead them to do bad things, such as drugs and alcohol, but it is the opposite. Gaming prevents people from such acts and actually helps to keep them away from the substances. Lots of people, mainly parents, believe that video games harm people so they try to keep their children away from them. In reality, video games make your life better. Video games can provide many benefits to your lifestyle as “numerous academic studies indicate that playing video games has many psychological and even physical benefits” (Guarini). Gaming helps stimulate the brain and advances your problem solving abilities. There are disadvantages to gaming, which is true, but the amount of benefits outweigh them by far.
There are several negative stereotypes associated with video games and those who play them; some of these may often hold true. However, there are plenty of learning opportunities in video games. While the direct purpose of some games is to educate or train, other games that do not directly have this purpose can still become a learning experience for the player. As Ntiedo Etuk, president of the educational video game company Tabula Digital said, “The traditional view of video games has been that they are distractions from the task of learning” (Electronic Education Report 1). Video games are an effective tool for learning and retaining skills both inside and outside the classroom environment. The basic cycle of game play--the introduction to the game, game play, collaboration, improvement of these between each round, and evaluation at the end of the game (Klievink and Janssen 159)--are nearly parallel to the traditional classroom learning cycle of reading a textbook or listening to a lecture, taking a quiz, studying, focusing on items missed on the quiz, and taking a test or exam. Within this cycle, there are many opportunities to develop and perfect both educational, life, and occupational skills.
The concept of “edutainment”- the hybrid of education and entertainment has existed almost as long as video games have. Evidence of this is The Oregon Trail, a game about the colo...
New gaming technology is being developed every year; the effects can only get more enhanced.