Video Games
December 11, 2009The reading by James Gee raised some interesting points. Creating relevant and interesting work is a focus of all teachers and using video games can help do this. Many students who sit disengaged in classrooms will go home and spend upwards of 8 hours engaged in video-game play. Gee effectively answers this question and makes a strong case in favour of video games supportive of learning as opposed to mindless entertainment. Video games require the use of many skills to successfully complete challenges. This in conjunction with the entertainment and competition factors makes a strong case for the successful use of gaming to promote literacy in our classrooms. All this seems to be to easy but as in my Wiki post see logistical difficulties in using the technologies in our classrooms and issues around creating false realities for our students. Life is not always entertaining and on occasions we need to do work that is laborious and disengaging. For some teachers this might be writing reports or marking essays. Despite all the enthusiasm in the world by the 80th report we struggle to maintain our enthusiasm. If only these types of task were in a video game format with daemons to conquer and empires to save.
