Video games have an incredible power to teach. While computers have made their way into the classroom, video games are still seen as toys, instead of the powerful learning tools which they really are. Iowa State University psychology professor Douglas Gentile is traveling to Washington to brief the White House on how video games can be used to teach. The hope is that this conference will lead toward new support for video games as teaching tools in the classroom. Game Politics has the story.
Sure we had educational games as kids, but those were just experiments, really, compared to what video games can do now. The issue is one of how the games teach. In our day, that was done in passing, as your wagon stopped at this fort or that river. Now, games are directly giving kids the tools to solve problems, and then giving them problems to solve as part of the game. It’s a new, more powerful way of doing things.