Games and Education – It’s the Perfect Match! Article

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Games and Education – It’s the Perfect Match!

Sep 5, 2016 | 1 Votes

by shilpa 9 rate Today, we discuss about how games and education are practically made for each other - they are the perfect match that will help your kids to actually enjoy the learning process. Games Educate Kids - Games and Education – It’s the Perfect Match!

Games Educate Kids - Games and Education – It’s the Perfect Match!

The most common misconception about gaming and anything related to gaming is that it creates bad characteristics in a child. Most parents think that gaming should be done away with entirely, because it is claimed to give rise to psychological problems and a reduced attention span among children. It has been claimed that gaming creates stunted mental growth and inability among kids to solve complex problems. The reality is quite different.

Gaming is beneficial to children because it opens children up to newer thought processes by introducing mental challenges. It matures children and forces them to use the most of their brain to succeed in a mission. It increases their attention span while solving complex problems, and those children who play games at least an hour a day develop the ability to think out of the box while approaching complex puzzles.

Can gaming be introduced in education as well?

Games have been introduced to the classroom and the results are fantastic. There are a number of benefits of introducing gaming in the classroom, and some of them are:

1. Engaging experience: Kids never see education as an engaging experience, and they don’t even remember the journey, nor do they find education fun. Learning through fun is the primary objective of educational games. Games provide an engaging experience with detailed environments, problem solving exercises and a huge variety of problems to solve. Not only that, games have been crucial in making students take leaps and bounds to increase their education level. Students learn quickly and they remember their journey.

2. Skill Development: Most games present to the child a variety of problems and the way of solving them also is varied. This creates a struggle to acquire new skills to solve these problems, and kids acquire them in a great pace. Not only do they learn basic calculation skills, but also decision making, strategy and even teamwork. They also learn creativity and apply their creative knowledge into solving problems.

3. Feeling connected: This is very important because most kids only do homework because they are forced to do it, or for passing the grade. This stems from an education system that does not make them feel connected to the content. Games that are in classrooms are content and storyline driven so kids feel more in tune with the content and they feel encouraged to solve a certain problem. In one instance of a game, students had to solve the water supply problem of a small town with only a handful of resources. The problems of the town folk in the game gave determination to students to solve their problem as fast and as uniquely as possible.

Games and Education – It’s the Perfect Match!

4. Practice makes perfect: While most textbooks and problem books contain only a handful of practise questions, games take on to practising skills in a different manner. Educational games have a lot of problem variety for practise, and kids are given the option to hone one skill at a time, as per needed. For example, it was seen that before an exam, revision through an educational game proved better than going through the textbooks. Games offer crisp content and kids quickly understand and retain it.

How well can teachers handle this technologically-driven change in the education system?

Although educational gaming has a learning curve directed towards students, teachers have a harder time in understanding each game and customizing it as per the class requirements. Although the task of customization isn’t impossible, it is difficult. Teachers, especially the new generation of teachers who have been exposed to the intricacies of the digital world can grip this new method of education quite nicely and adapt to it, making education gaming better for students. The older generation of teachers have it harder, but since they understand the concepts better than students, the tutorial of the game makes them understand the game thoroughly.

Gaming and Augmented/Virtual Reality

With the onset of virtual reality headsets and augmented reality applications, students can become more immersed in the world of educational gaming. VR and AR would make them move around and acquire skills. Some applications have augmented reality in them, which means that a student can point his AR device to a page that has been digitally bookmarked and see an interactive book review by the previous owner of the book. Moreover, in an AR game, they can be tasked to uncover mysteries of a particular subject with clues lying throughout the school campus.

Final Thoughts

Although educational gaming isn’t popular yet, it will be given the right amount of time. Schools are willing to become better and provide better opportunities to students. Like online classrooms and AR/VR driven education technology, educational gaming has come a long way from just being mathematics driven.