Video Games and Learning: Personal Response

The three videos listed in the previous blog have greatly helped me to appreciate all the potential that gaming has for student's cognitive development.

•  In the first video, the presenter claims that the areas of the brain that are responsible for focusing and attention span, are actually more active an efficient in action gamers than others. I believe that the best way for kids to be successful learners is to be not only engaged in educational activities at school, but also at home. If kids have a healthy amount of game play time at home, this may help stimulate their brain in ways that will help them be successful in school.
• In the second video, the presenter claims that The 5 things found to increase Fluid Intelligence (problem solving) are to seek novelty, challenge yourself, think creatively, do things the hard way, and network. These are all present in many popular action games today. It is no surprise that learning how to effectively problem solve is one of the primary goals of education today. Again, if engaging in gaming can help develop one's brain to problem solve more effectively in real ways, it can lead to greater success in school.
• In the third video, the presenter claims that since kids know when playing games that there is a way for them to be successful at it (beat a level, achieve certain points or rewards, etc) they look forward to the challenge and don’t easily become discouraged, but thrive on the challenge of it. If this type of mindset could be achieved in the classroom, it could have profound results. Often students become discouraged at failure or the feeling that they will never be good at a particular area of study, or even school in general. If we can get students to believe that success is possible and can actually be fun and rewarding, I believe we will see much more highly motivated students who want to learn because they believe they can.

Concordia University has an interesting publication online on the effectiveness of video games as curriculum. 

• The Quest To Learn School (which was also mentioned in some of the videos above) is showing great success when using gaming as the backbone of the curriculum. The school’s curriculum is based on evidence that shows people learn much more effectively when they can immediately put knowledge to use in a social context as opposed to merely being told facts.