{"id":1524,"date":"2010-11-10T09:30:15","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T13:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/?p=1524"},"modified":"2012-09-27T10:37:26","modified_gmt":"2012-09-27T14:37:26","slug":"games-and-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/games-and-education\/games-and-education\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s the Role of Gaming in Education?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whether violent affairs like the much-villified Grand Theft Auto series or more complex games such as the best-selling World of Warcraft, video games can seem bewildering to the unacquainted. Levels? Cheat codes? Orcs? Certainly there cannot be much within the flashing and beeping to excite educators, right? But in the past few years, the tides have started to turn from dismissing, or even rejecting, video games, to exploring and embracing how they can be used to educate students around the globe.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out, after all, that even gaming for pure entertainment brings about benefits: neurological studies have shown improvements in players&#8217; peripheral vision and ability to focus. Jane McGonigal is one of the most eloquent proponents of using games to meet serious challenges like educating the next generation. In her recent TED Talk, she outlines four characteristics of gamers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Urgently optimistic about their ability to make a difference,<\/li>\n<li>Builders of strong social capital,<\/li>\n<li>Capable of being productive while truly enjoying their task, and<\/li>\n<li>Attached to meeting important tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/dE1DuBesGYM?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/dE1DuBesGYM?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>In short, gamers are &#8220;super-empowered hopeful individuals&#8221; and McGonigal wants to use the activity to meet global challenges. As it turns out, this is already happening. In September, the New York Times Magazine profiled a public school in New York City that is placing video games front in center in the curriculum:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;A game, as Salen sees it, is really just a \u201cdesigned experience,\u201d in which a participant is motivated to achieve a goal while operating inside a prescribed system of boundaries and rules. In this way, school itself is one giant designed experience.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In this month&#8217;s EduTech Debate, we&#8217;ll be discussing the role for games in education. To begin, Bob Hawkins, of the World Bank Institute (WBI), will discuss EVOKE, an online game supported by infoDev and WBI that brought together thousands of young people around the globe to meet social challenges. Following that, and in keeping with our recent discussion of<a href=\"http:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/meducation-initiatives\/\"> mobile phones<\/a>, Thomas Putz will discuss the mGBL project. Further discussants will be announced shortly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whether violent affairs like the much-villified Grand Theft Auto series or more complex games such as the best-selling World of Warcraft, video games can seem bewildering to the unacquainted. Levels? Cheat codes? Orcs? Certainly there cannot be much within the flashing and beeping to excite educators, right? But in the past few years, the tides have started to turn from dismissing, or even rejecting, video games, to exploring and embracing how they can be used to educate students around the globe. It turns out, after all, that even gaming for pure entertainment brings about benefits: neurological studies have shown improvements in players&#8217; peripheral vision and ability to focus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[670],"tags":[672,671,673,542],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1524"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2550,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524\/revisions\/2550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}