SHOCKER: Most Kids Think That Learning from Games Would Be a Good Idea

Paul McNamara over at Network World's BuzzBlog reports on a study from Project Tomorrow.

This survey data is evidently drawn from all 50 states, American DOD schools, Canada, Mexico and
Australia including 319,223 K-12 students - 25,544 teachers - 19726 parents - 3,263 school leaders
from 3,729 schools and 867 districts. According to the report the responding schools were 97% public schools – 3% private schools, 32% Urban – 40% Suburban – 29% Rural, 43% Title I eligible; and 29% majority – minority student population.

Some of favorite findings:

Games make it easier to understand difficult concepts – 51%
o I would be more engaged in the subject – 50%
o I would learn more about the subject – 46% (56% of students in K-2 chose this as their #1 reason)
o It would be more interesting to practice problems – 44%

Here is another: "Only 3% of elementary students say they don’t play electronic games on some kind of device, 9% of middle school kids and 17% of high school kids."

Hmmm....wow....I wonder if maybe we should continue the debate about whether or not games are good for learning or maybe, here is an alternative...just shut up, accept the data and start really figuring out how to do it write and for PETE"S SAKE understand that design principles, ESPECIALLY design principles (except they aren't really design principles are they Adriana? ;-))...are not crafted in stone and can and should change and that BY ALL THAT'S GOOD AND PURE the classrooms and instructor-led training  were  probably NEVER studied RE their effectiveness as learning environments but rather as production environments. I'm sure that the Romans thought their empire wold stand for all time as well and look what happened to them.

Phew....Someone had me my water bottle.....sorry...its just that some of the comments on the original article are so wrong-headed that they just sent my blood pressure reeling - you should read them...

Comments

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Nice reading. Thanks for sharing.

Regards,
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[Adriana]

Hey Mark - what a shocker it was to see my name on your post.=) It must be in reference to the session I gave at the e_Learning Guild Annual Gathering. I plan to read the article that got you fired up. Like you, I am a firm believer that ID and gaming can work together to create great things. Step-by-step I plan to prove it with examples. First step was the session... Cheers- Adriana