Gaming

Gaming In Education

Consider the following statements: • Education has many goals. Few people would list “to be fun” as one of the main goals of education. Instead, people tend to say “achieve the standard.”

• Many games are used as a form of play. Games are for fun.

Now, thinking back to childhood. One can likely think of games that were fun and made significant contributions to learning. Some examples might include Monopoly, Yahtzee or Scrabble. These games typically required collaboration (sometimes deal-making), strategy, math skills and language development. As our world continued to become technology-based we moved into games such as //Where in the World is Carmen Santiago?//, //The Oregon Trail//, //Madden// and the world of //The Sims//. In schools today there is a generation of students who have never known a time in their lives without games for entertainment. However, as educations these games can be far more valuable towards promoting learning of new skills, for content development, and to enrich prior knowledge.

Games have contributed significantly to informal and formal learning. Playing games that involved two or more people can be an important component of one's social development and social life. Game playing has such a vast capacity to promote education that a new term has come describe this field, edutainment. Educational games are a fast emerging market within our current world. Included below are my thoughts towards educational gaming, exemplars of games, and lastly a project developed that focuses around using games as a digital alternative to test preparation.

Overview of Gaming

Exemplars of Successful Games

Gaming as an Alternative