Once shunned as a brain-rotting activity, video games are now winning over many teachers of teenage students as a way to inspire kids to learn: Games are a way to develop 21st century skills, such as collaborative problem solving, multitasking, and networking.
Some educators compare game play to the scientific method: Players enter a phenomenon that doesn’t make sense, observe problems, form hypotheses, and test them while being mindful of cause and effect. (Christian Science Monitor)
And, from LiveScience comes a report about an educational researcher who organized an afterschool group for boys to play, for educational purposes, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
[jumi {*168]}It turned out that some of the eighth graders and high school freshmen who signed up for the group and couldn’t have cared less about writing or reading in school, have gone from barely stringing together two sentences to writing lengthy posts in their group’s Web site forum, where they discuss detailed strategies for gearing up their virtual characters and figuring out tough quests.
Bottom line, the conversations showed that players had decent levels of scientific literacy. Players used reasoned arguments, backed up hypotheses and even brought statistics to bear on issues that they faced near the higher levels of the game. Read more in the article called, World of Warcraft Video Game Succeeds in School.