Video games in the classroom?

I am torn between video games being in school and them not being in school. I know that I played a lot of video games as a child and I feel that I am better than my peers, who did not play video games, at remembering info that I see in writing on the board in class. I played games that you would be given a piece of information just once and there was no opportunity to see that info again, unless you started the whole game over. So I was trained to remember information by my own choice to play video games. But on the other side of the argument if the children know that there are video games to play in the classroom they may have a hard time paying attention to the other information that we as teachers would like for them to be exposed to. They might just sit there not paying attention just thinking about playing the games. I do feel it might go a little too far into the “edutainment” realm

I agree with Gee that there is a lot in video games that is lacking in school. I especially agree with the system thinking aspect he touches on. Gee says “Games encourage players to think about relationships, not isolated events, facts, and skills.” This seems to be the exact opposite of what usually happens in school. Students are taught the facts and events they need to know and, although the teacher might have the system in mind, they are never shown or ever see the system they are working towards. I also really agreed with his Challenge and Consolidation section the reason games are fun is because they teach us a set of skills in a fun and challenging way that we do them so much they become easy to us, then after they are “routinized” the game challenges us to learn more by introducing a new skill to learn. I feel that if we were to somehow be able to make education like this it would really benefit the children’s learning

I feel that I will try to incorporate video games into my classroom in some way if they are actually educational. If there is a recognizable improvement in what the game is trying to teach then it will have been for the child’s benefit