Video Games in the Classroom

Once again, I will be making my blog post about the books we have been reading even though I did not want to be *that* person who always does.

When I was reading Reality Is Broken I felt a ton of truth in her words. What she described was just correct and spoke volumes to me. She is very good and persuasive at articulating her thoughts and arguments. Even though I already largely agreed with the benefits that video games have to offer us, I still found myself constantly surprised about how much clarity was in her words and how well she could articulate certain matters. It was really surprising to me that her book could have that effect on me even though I already largely agreed with her. Admittedly, she is rather optimistic about a few matters, and some of her points, while true, are not exactly viable to be implemented.

After reading this, I was on Facebook two days later and noticed that Nick was also reading it. However, his take was rather interesting to me. Even though he liked the book and the subject material, the fact that is was homework really hindered his feelings and impressions of it, or at least that is how I interpreted what he said. The fact that something that was fun to him was turned into homework and thus made not fun for him was interesting. That is when I came to realize that he had a very valid point. And that point is the same point of this blog post.

Video games in the classroom sound awesome. They are fun and enjoyable, versus most of the junk we are taught in school. It is a lot more active and not just getting talked at. However, putting deadlines and requirements on what you do in your gaming world(s), which is the one place you are supposed to have freedom, not defeating the point?

I will admit that I am enjoying playing FFIX for the class and am not having any issues with it. However, for our past two required readings on video games, I felt that, even though I enjoyed the books to some degree, my feelings were greatly hindered by the fact that I could not just put it down and stop when I started getting tired of it and felt like it was beginning to wane on me. Instead, I had no choice but to keep trucking along until the assignment was over. And that sucked. It was just not enjoyable. When this happened to me, specifically on the second book What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, I suddenly had this moment of clarity as to about what Nick was talking and I realized one simple thing: He was right.

Video games sound like a fantastic medium to add to the classroom and I admit there is merit to it. But there needs to be a balancing act of some sort that occurs here if it were to happen. Otherwise, video games would end up no different than the homework students currently have to endure. They would be thought of as not fun, terrible things. That is exactly the opposite of what is desired by the two books we are reading for class. There is this inherent contradiction upon which neither of them appear to touch.

Even though it is a really obvious train of thought to have, it never occurred to me. When it did, I was surprised I had never thought of it before. Even though I already knew a lot about video games and had a lot of thoughts on my opinion of their usefulness, including in the classroom, I am glad to have learned something more, which I did not expect to happen. I think that it is also quite ironic that I learned this in a class about video games.