(Response to a news article)
NY1 news article "Public School Students Enjoy Thrill Of Math-Based Video Games" described that a gaming competition at Columbia University engaged hundreds students from public schools on 13th march in 2010. "Now these students from 80 cities schools can truthfully say they are doing their homework as they play video games." DimensionM is a role- playing video game which requires quick math skills to keep going. Kids compete with each other in this three-dimensional and multi-player game and teachers can tailor the math to what each students needs to work on. “It helped my math get 10 times better,” one of the students said.
This is an good example to show that students could improve their mathematical performance by playing video games. Randel et al. (1992) state that the beneficial effects of gaming are more likely to be found, when specific content such as mathematics, physics and language arts is targeted. Furthermore, students are more interested in game activities than conventional classroom instruction. This example also shows that it could be solved by integrating video games into teaching. Students always feel boring about learning mathematics, but video games may change the way they learn it and make the learning to be fun. Besides, this news shows that video games might have been gradually integrated into current education systems in the United States of America, and these video games could be used either for teaching at school or homework at home.
Education could be more fun because kids are growing up in a word with many new media forms such as instant messenger, video games, social networking and so on. Therefore, it is clear that traditional way of teaching could be improved by introducing more well-designed educational games in this new digital era. More educational games could be designed and used in teaching other subjects for example history, literature, and so on.
Reference:
Randel, M.,Morris, B. A., Wetzel,C.D.& Whitehill, B.V. (1992). The effectiveness of games for educational purposes: A review of recent research. Simulation Gaming vol. 23 (3). 261-276.
