State of Education: Games in Education
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Science, technology, engineering, and math are big subjects in today's classroom and now there's an addition to the lesson plan, video games.
"We make video games at first playable for entertainment purposes primarily but something that struck us very early on is the huge potential that the games have for actually supplementing and encouraging kids to learn a curriculum topic,” said Tobi Saulmier, CEO of First Playable Productions.
The "Games in Education" symposium here at the Tech Valley High School brought in over 100 educators from across the country. As it turns out, many things can be learned by simply just "playing the game."
"The amount they research, they learn game systems, they learn reading in order to be successful at their game, so a lot of these topics are what they learn in school,” said Saulmier.
"Games are what kids do and we as educators need to embrace that and really use it as a tool in our classroom as way to connect with kids both on a personal level and educational level,” said Kathy Fuller, Her Story owner and former educator.
This workshop symposium has been described as "hands-on and brains-on", and with ever-growing role of games in the classroom, the subjects covered include everything from reading, writing, and arithmetic.
"Using it with classic literature and using it with mathematics and social studies and historical topics and it can be done and it has been successfully done, it's just a matter of getting more widespread acceptance of it,” said Fuller.
And oh yes, there was also a little guitar hero for the music end of learning.
"A lot of the students that I have interacted with in our district have said they have picked up and taken an interest in playing a real guitar because of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero,” said Lucas Gillispie, Instructional Technology Coordinator Pinder County Schools- North Carolina.
And with "Games in Education", there's been a new word that's been created here, "edutainment" and so far that word is spreading.
"We're starting to see some of this in our district, the integration of video games into the classroom because they're just engaging, and when you get students engaged, you can get them to learn,” said Gillispie.
Along with a little "interactive" teaching.