Video Gameducation

“Hey, kids! Stop playing the video game! Why don’t you study for a while? If you won’t do it, don’t blame me if I’ll take your PSP!”

Have you experience that kind of situation? Ok if you don’t, at least I've ever experience that since I’m a RPG (Role Playing Game) lovers. Most of adult think that playing a video game is just a wasting of time! And of course, I don’t agree with that statement. Beside as an RPG lover, I personally as an educator believes that video game may be the best tool for education.

Whether violent affairs like the much-villified Grand Theft Auto series or more complex games such as the best-selling World of Warcraft, video games can seem bewildering to the unacquainted. Levels? Cheat codes? Orcs? Certainly there cannot be much within the flashing and beeping to excite educators, right? But in the past few years, the tides have started to turn from dismissing, or even rejecting, video games, to exploring and embracing how they can be used to educate students around the globe.

It turns out, after all, that even gaming for pure entertainment brings about benefits: neurological studies have shown improvements in players’ peripheral vision and ability to focus. Jane McGonigal is one of the most powerful proponents of using games to meet serious challenges like educating the next generation. In her recent TED Talk, she outlines four characteristics of gamers:

1.    Urgently optimistic about their ability to make a difference,

2.    Builders of strong social capital,

3.    Capable of being productive while truly enjoying their task, and

4.    Attached to meeting important tasks.

In short, gamers are “super-empowered hopeful individuals” and McGonigal wants to use the activity to meet global challenges. As it turns out, this is already happening. In September, the New York Times Magazine profiled a public school in New York City that is placing video games front in center in the curriculum:

“A game, as Salen sees it, is really just a “designed experience,” in which a participant is motivated to achieve a goal while operating inside a prescribed system of boundaries and rules. In this way, school itself is one giant designed experience.”

That’s why there is nothing is impossible! As a prospective teacher we should pay a big attention on what’s being a trend for the students then we work with our mind to integrate it to the education. Let’s start to develop the video gameducation!