Gaming in Education. How to Turn a Necessary Thing Into Something Attractive
Education is one of the most important things in every man’s life. After years and years of going through school, you might feel you don’t have something tangible to hold on to. Maybe just the diplomas and the entire library you went through. The extraordinary thing about education is that all its results are not tangible, but they have lots and lots of side effects. Your current job, your social status, a great part of what you have is a side effect of the educational system you went through. For example, without the skills you’ve developed through college or high school, you wouldn’t have been qualified for your actual job.
The same way every industry and system needs to improve and incorporate the latest trends, the educational system needs to incorporate technology. They need to incorporate it and turn a necessary thing, which is education, into something very attractive for the students. For example, teachers should use games to help the students develop certain skills.
Here are the main reasons why teachers should use games to help their students evolve.
1. Economics are Learned Much Easier
Almost every game has its own economic system. Instead of writing long essays and trying to imagine how the economy works, students can get a better visualization of it by playing games.
Let’s take a very simple example. I guess we all know The Sims game. It’s that game where you start with a 2 member family and a small budget, you build a house for them, and start their life from scratch. They make friends, they buy things, they spend money, then you get them hired, expand their house, etc. Well, by playing that childish game, every student will be able to understand what a mortgage is, how you can use money efficiently. Also, this game will help them see how they should organize their incomes in order to get through the day and save some money for tomorrow.
Any MMORPG game is valuable for a teenager. We won’t talk about its gameplay or anything like that, we’ll talk about its economic system. Every such game has a market and that’s the place where students can learn the basics of trading. They can take buy large volumes of items for a smaller price and retail them to make a profit.
2. Better Communication
Some might say that computers, social media networks, and games, in particular, will decrease a student’s ability to relate to other peers, communicate with its classmates or family. A very important part of any multiplayer game is the communication between the players. How can you take down a monster without coordinating yourself with the ones in your team? How can you win a guild war, if you don’t communicate with your teammates? It’s easy, you can’t!
Any game-loving student will tell you that he constantly needs to communicate with fellow players. Whether he is writing a message to his friend, which will help him improve his writing skills or talks over Skype with them, he is constantly communicating with someone.
This being said, people saying that games are not good for communication skills, you should take a closer look.
3. Get to Know Other Cultures
Education is not all about learning certain theoretical things, such as mathematics, economics, literature, and so on. It’s also about getting to know those around you. Whether we talk about getting to know your classmates who come from different corners of the world or learning about other cultures, education is about widening your horizon.
The more people and cultures you get to know, the greater your chances of success. Knowing how to interact with the people around you is very important, in terms of, both personal, and professional life.
Games, especially multiplayer games, are the perfect place to meet and get to know all the cultures in this world. By simply playing your favorite game you will get to know people from Europe, Asia, Africa, you might even meet penguins from Antarctica.
We’ve been talking about the benefits of using games as a method to educate and develop certain skills for our students. Here are a few examples of games you should use.
The Sims
We talked about this game in the first paragraphs of this article. It is one of the most useful games in terms of its educational value. While playing this game you will learn the basics of economics and of construction. More important than that, you will learn how a family should behave, in terms of spending habits, work habits, how you should approach certain problems that pop-up along the way during life.
MMORPGs-Conquer 3.0
Like I said, multiplayer online games are very useful for improving interpersonal and intercultural communication. Apart from getting to know your classmates better, you get to make new friends. Also, during my time playing different multiplayer games, I’ve come across lots of cultures. I got to know them, their habits, the best way to approach them.
Another great strong point of the multiplayer games is the teamwork. You develop the skills needed to be able to work in a team. You know how to take certain roles, how to assign them, how to take full responsibility for your actions, and so on.
Conclusion
One of the benefits brought to us by technology is the possibility to turn something necessary, such as education, into something attractive and interactive. Using games as a method to educate our children is a very innovative and effective approach.
Certain games, such as simulation games, will teach our children about how certain decisions influence our lives. Other games, such as multiplayer games, will help improve their communication and intercultural skills. Also, they will learn everything there is about being an active member of a team.
Last, but not least, apart from being educative, these games are also relaxing. The students’ stress level will decrease, thus their results will improve.
