Do Video Games Belong in School?

Eric is a friend of mine from college. Since graduating he’s become a teacher. The other night he sent me an instant message with a funny story about a student.

Eric: I had a student in class today try to convince me that he should be able to play a trench warfare video game in history class, because it was “educational”. When his teacher asked him what war it was about the kid paused and answered, “The Cold War.”

Me: Haha!!

Eric went on to explain how a game about trench warfare couldn’t possibly be about the Cold War. The student went further than that and conducted more research on the war using Wikipedia.

This reminded me of a study conducted in 2007. It found that over 50% of students believe educational video games would help them learn while 81% of teachers disagreed. The results of the study are not surprising but maybe the kids are on to something. A mere discussion on the prospect of video games in the classroom led Eric’s student to study the Cold War.

Several companies are developing educational video games. Even if you think gaming in the classroom is absurd you’d have to agree that games (at the very least) can serve as a valuable topic of discussion in school. Imagine students discussing how Project Natal works in science class or how computer science is used to create a video game.

[Via - Eric ]