Serious Gaming

Game-based instruction is a concept that I was familiar with, but I was unaware of how many great resources are available. I enjoyed reading Matthew Farber's thoughts about utilizing SimCityEDU in his classroom in this Edutopia article. I am intrigued by the idea of rewarding students for knowledge with a badge system. His students are thoroughly engaged while meeting the required content objectives. Another key point that I took from this article is the idea of taking content from popular video games and using it in the classroom. Farber mentioned particular missions from Assassin's Creed 3 having relevance in a history classroom. I would like to explore this concept further in relation to my math classroom. Most of my students play video games, so this would be a great way to engage them and connect to math concepts. I could see a game like Minecraft having possibilities of connecting to the concepts I teach.

Using games in the classroom requires a great deal of planning on the front end, but I think the benefits could be tremendous. I found many great existing resources that I could implement in my classroom. Zondle is an educational game site that allows to choose existing content or create your own. You can track student progress and students can earn badges for accomplishments. Everything is free, and it looks like this would be relatively easy to introduce to the classroom. BrainRush is another game site that allows you to choose from free existing content or create your own games. BrainRush looks like it would work well for vocabulary or concept reviews.

I see two major benefits in incorporating game-based instruction in the math classroom. The first is an increase in student engagement. Games provide students with new motivation to learn concepts and persevere through challenges. The second benefit I see is the opportunity to improve problem-solving skills. The 21st century job market desires creative problem solvers, and games provide students with many opportunities to sharpen those skills. The research I have done this week has challenged me to determine the best way to incorporate game-based instruction into my classroom.