Video Games And Education ESSAY

Universidad del Este
IEN Business School
Recinto de Carolina

Video Games and Education

Jeremy Cotto Arroyo
S01007090
Prof. Figueroa
Video games and education, too very different topics to talk about, video games being a topic mostly talked about by teens and children and education by adults, video games also being a topic talked down by adults because they see it as a waste of time, and really who could blame them? It is a waste of time, but for teens and children at the end of the day is more than just that, but, will get more into video games later on. Education, we all know what education is, we spend our whole life being educated, whether it is in our first stages of life by our family and teachers or later on by life, so, we have this too big activities or whatever you want to call it, right, well what would happen if we fuse them together? What happens when we bring them into the same environment? What happens when we accept video games as a tool that we can use to show anybody Math, English, or any subject really? Games in school would make it easier and a lot more fun to learn.

First of all its pretty obvious that video games as an educational seems like a scary idea, the reason being that its just a relatively new idea, and that causes a lot of questions, like, how would children and teens react to it being an educational tool? Its already a fact that most children, teens, and even adults enjoy playing a good and fun video game, but, what would happen if we just connected education to it?

In all reality not much of a difference would of happen, video games are already “nothing but problem-solving spaces”, as said by James Gee, as cited in the article Educational Video Games (2010). James Gee, a professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and graduate of the School of Education at Arizona State University (ASU), even said that educators could learn a lot from video games about effective ways to teach, he even gave an example, and that’s that “games provide information when it is need, instead of all at once in the beginning”, like most professor do! And this is by personal experience, every time a professor, or even a teacher back in High School, just through all the information at my face at the start, I would lose interest for every class the professor gives afterwards, because I know that all those classes are going to be the professor repeating him/herself over and over again.

Other positive things that video games showcase that would be very beneficial in the classroom is how video games can teach us how to manage assessment better, as said in the article Education Video Games (2010) “one thing games can teach us is how to manage assessment better. Currently, schools, use standardized tests administered by an outside testing industry. In games, however, assessment and learning are tightly married. Games constantly assess player performance and provide feedback.
So video games already teach us outside of the classroom, so imagine how much more the student would learn with a teacher or professor showing them the roads and clearing up the doubts.

In conclusion video games will never bring any negatives into the classroom when use correctly, it will only bring positive feedback from the students, it will bring a sort of relief to the students knowing that one of their favorite casual activities are now in the classroom. Making this happen is far from impossible, the potential of video games being used as an educational tool is in an all-time high, and not taking advantages of them would be something idiotic to do. I fully encourage for learners to use this tactic in the classroom, and to see that their students would benefit from it.

References

Educational Video Games. (2010). The science teacher, 77.

References: Educational Video Games. (2010). The science teacher, 77.