Video Games as a Learning Tool?
When one thinks of ways of learning, one rarely considers video games as a viable avenue. Long regarded as just a venue for mindless entertainment, whether on your ancient Atari playing Pong or playing The Legend of Zelda on your new Nintendo Switch console, video games have held an important cultural space. Over the years, there have been many educational games created such as the Oregon Trail series beginning in 1971, Math Blaster from the 1980s, and JumpStart’s series in the 1990s, just to name some famous ones that we all grew up with.
In 2002, Dr. Mark Griffiths published his article The educational benefits of videogames. His research was focused on understanding the effects of video games as well as the educational and health benefits to video games. He concludes that “Videogames have great positive potential [for education] in addition to their entertainment value.” As he could see in 2002, video games have the potential to be democratizing tools for education as not everyone learns the same way.
2009 would prove to be a seminal year in dramatically expanding the possibilities of learning through video games. That year, Markus Persson published the first iteration of the now smash hit Minecraft. The premise of Minecraft, a 3D sandbox adventure where you can mine, dig, and axe for resources, build your home, and complete the game’s various adventure quest such as defeating the Ender Dragon and the Wither, would prove to be an incredible versatile tool for creation, planning, and coding. From the very beginning, different people were recreating ancient cities, building computers and circuits with the game’s redstone mechanics, creating 3D printers, and more. Others, as the game developed, would try and create educational mod’s that would have characters within the game that users could interact with, get rewards for accomplishing “quests”, and more.
8 years later, video games are not only proving to be an important part of global culture, but also, proving to be vital educational tools. Video games provide a safe, inexpensive way to approach learning and allowing the mind to grow. Games such as the aforementioned Minecraft as well as city sims such as the famed SimCity and popular Cities: Skylines, have been used to teach urban planning and architectural design even at the highest levels of education. They provide virtual environments which is non-destructive and reproducible. Sometimes, it just feels good to take some TNT and blow up your creation, just so you can start anew and learn from your mistakes.
