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As some of you may know, I have been taking a Master’s Degree in Education with John’s Hopkins University for the past 18 months. The last class I took was titled: Gaming and Media Design in Education. It was not a prerequisite for my degree in Administration and Supervision, but I was fascinated by learning about the implementation of video games into curricula; Who wouldn’t want to take a class where homework and gaming are synonymous ?

Putting aside some of my issues with a wholly online class (this class was based in Ning), I was able to engage with some interesting ideas about gaming and education. Before this class I thought that I was engaging my students in a technological environment by using Web2.0 tools and the odd flash games like, ContentGenerator.net, 3rdworldfarmer.com and BBC games… but now I realize that there is so much potential in the gaming industry.

The Nintendo Wii has revolutionized the gaming industry and is being used in a number of classrooms (particularly elementary it seems). It has great brain-software and could be used to stimulate students as a warm up for an activity.

Last week I read the beginning of an excellent series of blog posts by Tom Barrett on his use of the game Myst with his classes. His use of gaming into a writing unit is an excellent example of the integration of gaming in teaching.

History simulations have been a part of the gaming world for decades (I loved Civilization, and Caesar as a kid), and now there are plenty of World War II shooters in the main stream. I think we should embrace them for the classroom. We use clips from movies all the time, why not video games? They are a clear representation of the past in our culture… students need to make connections with them as historical documents and evaluate them as interpretations of the past. Newsweek would certainly agree…

Games are a real motivator for our students. My students continued to play the 3rdworldfarmer.com game at home for days after we used it in class; they even posted their high scores

Why don’t we use games in the classroom?

Games are expensive and most popular games today require more hardware than most of us have in our classrooms - how much memory does your graphics card have?? The only solution is to purchase older games (as Tom Barrett has done), but many of us are hamstrung by not having admin rights to computers, or the need to get software approved.

Many games are also equivalent to R-rated movies. The reality is that it would be impossible to use any of the Medal of Honor series of games in the classroom - the graphic violence would get me a number of parent letters

So…

I am going to continue using flash games as often as I can. The BBC website is excellent and there are some wonderful games at gamesforchange.com. In fact there are games on the internet for most subjects you can think of. One of my goals this year will be to integrate them as often as possible… this is the easy step.

It is harder to integrate commercial games into my instruction. Perhaps I should bring a Wii into the classroom sometimes to play some brain games, or set up a Civilization competition with my students. I am not in a position with admin rights to do what Tom has been doing, but I would love to try. What experiences have others had?

And…

If you want to read some of the articles we read for our class you can find some in the text above, but all of them are tagged at my diigo account…