Scientist: Video Games can be educational

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/10....ap/index.html

(Mods: Posted here because I felt this should have a general discussion, rather than just amongst gamers. I'm sure almost everyone here is anyway, but I'd like to see what non-hardcore gamers have to say as well).

Having grown up on games, I'd have to say that this would certainly help people in school. Granted, it'll be difficult to make an educational game fun and at the same time teach something you'd want to learn in school, but I believe this would make school a lot more fun and interesting.

Imagine if instead of just reading a book on the American Revolution, you could enter a virtual world where you could see that stuff unfolding, and watch battles as they take place (of course, they'd have to be close to historical accuracy for the schools to take them seriously).

Or a math question like "If the Revolutionary Army has 400 soldiers, and loses 158 soldiers in this battle, how many soldiers will they have left?" or a banking simulator, "If you invested your $100 at an annual 4% interest rate, how much money will you make in a year? What if the bank had 6.5% interest?"

Another thing that I found interesting was "Typing of the Dead" (this wasn't in the article, just my own personal comment), which was House of the Dead, but instead of a gun, the monsters had words, and you had to type out the words to "kill" them. While it sounds like a ridiculous concept, I have to admit it made learning to type fun (the game also records how well/fast you type, and which letters you have trouble with, and helps you to focus on those letters if you want to). I'd have to admit that playing this game, along with playing MMORPG's and using IM's has helped my typing a lot more than the typing class I took in high school.

Of course, there are a lot more possibilities, but I think used properly, it could help to reshape education. A lot of people already do gaming, so why not do it for education? It'll take a lot of creativity of course, but if done properly, this could actually make going to school fun.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

But educational games are always complete toilet. It's just too hard to include an educational element into a game without kids realising they're being taught, not having fun. I think more promising is the influx of games like Big Brain Academy and Dr Slitty's Brain Training which make no pretence about being educational but are actually kinda fun although they're marketting both of those at adults rather than kids.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I played Mario's Time Machine years ago and actually enjoyed it... well to some extent. But then again, I love history, so that helped.

I think educational games, or games that have a learning tool only work when the person is willing to give it a chance or is at least interested in it.

For me, games like Sim City and Civilization have been educational for me, and my parents had always let us play those games much longer than many of the other ones because they knew I was learning something.

How ya doing, buddy?

I learned a few things about history playing Age of Empire games. Some of those ancient civilizations I had never heard of before. It also got me interested in finding some more stuff on my own, outside of the game.

Also, I must say video games helped my reading comprehension as a child. I read instruction manuals before playing games so I knew what to do, and they always insisted on using words like simultaneously and invulnerable. At 6 years old, I shouldn't know what these words are yet, but I learned them reading those manuals, and many other words (like the difference between invisible and invincible). I'm not sure if manuals are still written in a manner that is as unfriendly to kids these days, so perhaps these don't help kids the way they did me.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I give it 10 days circulating around the net before Jack Thompson compares it to being educated in a vacuum nazi think tank. :P

Personally I hate many edutainment games (Mario is Missing can eat my nutsack thank you.) but I won't lie - there was one I did have a lot of fun with. I doubt anyone remembers this, but I had very fond memories of an old PC diskette game called OutNumbered. That really did help me learn math better when I was small, plus it was a lot of fun.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I remember when I was younger that I had a game that let me do math while Shooting numbers of Asteroids. The same game let me play a hang man type game, but the thing is that the games showed that they were really educational, so the thing is that educational games that taught kids with fun and didn't show that they were being taught would. It could be done with proper research and different topics.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I totally played those games when I was a kid. They were badass.

FELIPE NO

Typing of the Dead was the shit! And currently, I'm addicted to Brain Age even though it really isn't a "game" in the traditional sense.

And as far as educational games primarily being crap, I'd have to agree. There needs to be a educational game revolution! In fact, I'm working with 3 other guys to start a casual educational games company with a focus on music ed. I think it's key to camoflage or burry educational elements deep within addictive gameplay, and thus far that hasn't been accomplished. We'll be pitching a few game ideas for learning disabled kids to a connection with the Chicago public school system here in the next few months.

One thing though, I think a lot of games inspire further education, cause hell they've inspired me to do art, design, and music. For others they inspire kids to learn programming languages.

Oh yeah, I will give props to one of my fav edu games.... Where in the World is Carmen San Diego!

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Aww I liked Typing of the Dead; they looked hilarious running around with those keyboards slung around their necks

Maybe I'm just some sort of anomaly but I don't think this theory is right otherwise I'd be incredibly clever considering how much time I spend playing videogames. As for educational games, I don't think it's possible to make it subtle enough to trick anyone.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Obviously games can be educational. It doesn't take a scientist to prove that. But the only "educational" game(s) that I ever played that actually any fun was Carmen Sandiego, but I barely retained any of the information I learned from that.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I learned the majority of my Grade 8 social studies from Age of Empires II: Age of Kings. I finished the course with an over all 90. Sure the game takes a few creative liberties, but when compared with the text book it matched up pretty solidly.

Also, i remember loving all kinds of educational games when i was a kid. Treehouse was a good one, Word Rescue and Math Resuce, and MathBlaster. Yeah, but in order to appeal to older kids, it'll have to be different material.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I remember Math Blaster. My dad always wanted me to do it when I was little... I've gotten the Brain Games on the DS, and I suppose they've helped.

I've always wanted Typing of the Dead, but i've never been able to find the game. Or get it to work for that matter. My typing speed is already decent enough from all the message boards, stories, constant IMs, and MMORPGing i've done.

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video games helped me to get interested and learn english.
Im natively an spanish speaker, but when i was a kid i was always wondering what the flashing booklet from the games said, and it got me always curious for the language.
maybe if the games are aimed to somehow learn language or something, it may help a little.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Any old school KOEI gamer can tell you that there's a lot that can be learned from games. I learned a ton of geography from playing Uncharted Waters. In fact there was an announcement months back that the University of Tokyo was going to use Great Voyage Online (Uncharted Waters Online) in a research experiment to show that games can be used in a positive role.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Enter User Name

Obviously games can be educational. It doesn't take a scientist to prove that. But the only "educational" game(s) that I ever played that actually any fun was Carmen Sandiego, but I barely retained any of the information I learned from that.

Yeah, Carmen Sandiego was pretty fun. I still have it on CD-ROM. There's bits and pieces of knowledge presented about each country that you visit while pursuing Carmen's criminal allies. At least I think so from what I can remember.

I've played some fun algebra-themed games in the past.

FELIPE NO

I learned a lot from playing Parasite Eve. I learned a lot of biological terminology through that game, about how mitochondria convert oxygen into ATP, etc. It was fun and every...educational. ^_^

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?