I’m slowly trying to find ways to implement games in my classes. I’m bound and determined not to call a "drill" a game, or use things that are really the equivalent of a quiz in "game" format. I want the experiences to be more valid than that for the students. It might be that designing games as an assessment of content knowledge engages a certain demographic more so than a podcast or movie project. I’m hoping my tech club will want to mod games to create teaching tools for other teachers for community service credit. I want to figure out how to use the AI of the games in ways that keeps the learning in the "hard fun" range. We’ll see if I can pull it off in little ways this year – try a few things, get some ideas from the students, see what flies and what bombs, and which other teachers I can talk into trying these ideas in their classes too.
Below are just a few of my recent games/learning bookmarks. Suggestions of other sites, blog posts, journal articles, etc. would be more than welcome – but most especially examples from the classroom. I teach art, but I’m doing tech integration with all subjects at the secondary level and am interested in pretty much all the applications of games in public education.
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Games-based learning: bringing computer games to the classroom
Another resource, this one from Learning and Teaching in Scotland, on games in education and learning.
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edublogs: Interactivity in gaming: are we there yet?
Great blog post examining our uses of gaming in education and what constitutes interactivity among students.
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CAUTION: Childen at Play – The Truth About Violent Youth and Video Games
Interesting blog post about violence in videogames and the data on youth violence over the last thirty years of so. Worth a look.
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LeaderTalk: Video games and learning: Individualization, simulation, and complexity
Blog post on video games and learning. Good thoughts, references.
1 Comment
August 31, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Thanks for posting this. I recently had the fortune of being with Ewan McIntosh in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan where we spent an afternoon discussing gaming in education. As a result it has really peaked my interest in how games can be used to further our students learning. I’ve created the Gaming in Education wiki http://www.gamingineducation.wikispaces.com as an attempt at creating a collaborative location for teachers using this approach with their students. Thanks again. – John