[Yr7-10it] games

[victor rajewski]

Hi all,

Last Friday I hosted a games night for my students at school. This
involved students bringing a variety of games into the school, then
loading them onto the network or hooking up to the projector. It was a
great bonding experience, and I'll be doing more of them in the future
as a reward for positive behaviour. But what really grabbed me was
seeing students playing Quake Team Arena. Now, I've read research on
how good games are for student learning, multi-tasking, etc, etc. But
I was quite blown away at actually seeing it. One student, who has
considerable difficulty with just about all unfamiliar task, was quite
shaky at the start of the game. Within an hour, he had found his feet,
and within two hours was up there with the best of them (having passed
my own abilities some time before). Keeping track of that many things
at the same time, working together with others, learning by himself,
are all things he typically struggles with in the classroom. Yet here
he had learnt a considerable amount all by himself in a very short
period of time. OK, so the context is violent. I have mixed feelings
about this, but in the context of my particular school, we are trying
to discourage this. So, the question is: "how can we harness this
learning potential?" Ideas I've come up with are by making games -
that link to Alice seems really interesting, but probably aimed more
at higher levels. But where are the immersive 3D educational
environments? I want a a Quake where a student has to solve a logic
problem, or paint a picture, or write something, or analyse a piece of
text or something before they can get to the next stage... Is there
anything like this? Is anyone working on this?

/rant

vik