Mark Greenfield gave an interesting presentation last night to the Learning Community about the use of games ( particularly Travian) as educational tools. I was most impressed with the potential for games like this to be used but I wondered afterwards about why students complain about the ways that information is presented currently. Something that Mark said ( I think it was that students come and are bored and want to 'switch the channel' but find that they are stuck with the same channel) triggered for me a) how gaming might be used and b) why students come to education with this mind set.
a) I sort of alluded to this in the session but with things happening in the game in some sort of real time then breaks could be filled with relevant educational material (either on or off line) that reinforces the concept being covered in the course. So for instance if crops are being planted then there could be resource about botany, food groups, cooking, seasons, history of food.
Likewise, I would like to see a repository of other online games like Sim City etc that might have application to various educational settings.
b) what are we doing as parents that prepares our children to expect that "they" are the centre of the universe. The first thought that came to me was that it is all very well to have flexible learning techniques but what about the real workforce where people are often stuck doing boring, repetitive tasks for most of their work-time whether or not they are a check out operator or a doctor? Shouldn't we be more realistic and prepare them for a world where they will be subject to harrassment, non recognition for skills, a mismatch of what they are trained to do and what they are actually permitted to do?
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