Imagine having the opportunity to learn while playing games and enjoying yourself. This has become a reality to students in schools today. Students now have the opportunity to learn while enjoying themselves and playing games. This is a very beneficial and interactive way for students to engage and be interested in what they are learning.
When implementing games in the classroom and introducing them to students, it is vital that the educational context is well implemented and students understand the outcomes and the goals of the lesson (Hamari et al., 2014). Throughout the lesson, students should be given a chance to make mistakes and learn how to use the software. By making mistakes and self guided learning students will be exposed to understanding that to be successful mistakes are made on the way.
As emphasised by Presky (2007), adults do not understand the way students think and how their mind works. Thus, games that are presented to students should be able to engage them and interest them in learning and creating. Students should have options to choose from that cater to their interests and at the same time teach them key skills and content. An example of a program that allows students to customise their learning is the software Scratch. It allows students to visually see their progress and introduces 21st century skills that are needed to empower students with other software’s. These skills could be potentially used in future careers in building and programming software’s.
According to Granic, Lobel and Engels (2014), the benefits of playing video games are cognitive, motivational and emotional, while improving attention and focus and lifting up moods. This can be very beneficial for students with learning needs as they can learn and do the task at their own pace and provides students with an opportunity to discover and create different worlds.
Another game that is commonly used throughout schools is Minecraft. Minecraft teaches students mathematical concepts such as ratios and proportions while encouraging creativity and collaboration. It can be integrated across all key learning areas such as world history and reading comprehension. Thus, there are many educational benefits for the integration of games in the classroom and many different applications and ways to implement them.
All photos and videos used are my own, unless stated otherwise.
References
Granic, I., Lobel, A., & Engels, R. C. (2014). The benefits of playing video games. American psychologist, 69(1), 66-78.
Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014, January). Does Gamification Work?-A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. In HICSS (Vol. 14, No. 2014, pp. 3025-3034).
NSW Education Standards Authority. (2018). Science and Technology K-6. Retrieved from https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/key-learning-areas/science/science-and-technology-k-6
Prensky, M. (2007). Students as designers and creators of educational computer games. Retrieved from: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-Students_as_Game_Creators-.pdf
Digital Creativity and Learning 
Hi Abeer,
This is an interesting post on games based learning! I have read many research articles that all say similar things to what you have pointed out about using games as a way for students to learn and create. However, a lot of teacher blogs have stated that getting students to play games often causes too much off-task behaviour in the classroom which often takes time away from the actual learning. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this. I agree that scratch is a great way to apply games based learning. It is an exceptional program that also allows students to build up their computational thinking which is very important in today’s world. However, what stage would you recommend using scratch for? Even though it has simplistic features, it is still quite a sophisticated program that younger students might not get much learning out of.
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