The Future In Our Education Lies In What We Least Expect, Video Games

By:Priscilla Lau

October 8, 2019

What comes to mind when you hear video games?

For any gamer, words such as entertaining, challenging, or raging come up. But for adults, especially parents, there might be some slight hesitation, followed by negative words.

Violent, waste of time, useless.

Children growing up hearing these words from their parents become discouraged and are forced to lose their interest in the one thing that might bring them joy.

But are they really as bad as they seem?

Sure, there are games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto; everyone associates them as games with violent content, but most fps (first-person shooter) games are like that. What most people don’t realize is that there are games that actually can be more helpful than harmful.

In an article titled “What Video Games Can Teach Us”, James Gee, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin, says “Kids diagnosed with ADHD because they can't pay attention will play games for 9 straight hours on the computer. The game focuses attention in a way that school doesn't.”

Students in school get easily bored with classes and lectures, quickly focusing their attention on something other than what the teacher is telling them. But what video games do that most schools can’t accomplish is capturing their attention. Video games do more than just show graphics on a screen where the player just sits and watches. They interact as well, being involved with the game.

A great example is one of the world’s biggest video game platforms:

Minecraft.

There are over 100 million players in the entire world, ranging from any age. Because it's such a diverse multi-platform game, anyone can play, whether you use your phone, tablet, computer, or console.

In Minecraft, the objective in the game is to create and build, not to destroy and ruin. You can explore to your heart’s content, no limits or rules involved.

For the rest of their lives, children are told to follow rules and guidelines. But in the game, they are free to do whatever they want. Because Minecraft gives every player a large vast open-world to explore, it gives children the opportunity to be their most creative selves.

Not only does Minecraft give children the opportunity to be more creative, but it also allows them to feel like they have control over themselves and their environment around them.

In many studies conducted, researchers found that playing Minecraft teaches kids useful skills. It helps kids learn how to collaborate and work well with others, how to solve problems, and helps improve critical thinking skills that support motivation for learning.

But Minecraft can do more than just build and create. In the game, you can also learn how to code and create your own servers from scratch. A server is a multiplayer world where you and your friends can join and play together. But servers are more complicated than you think. Not only do you have to figure out the coding and programming, but also how to add modifications that change or add items to the game, constantly keeping the server up-to-date with the latest Minecraft releases, maintaining the server so it doesn’t lag, glitch, or crash, and making sure that it’s compatible with the number of players that can join.

For reasons such as this, many programs, such as ones during the summer, have been created to teach kids about coding and the ins and outs of Minecraft. Even some schools have started teaching it in their classrooms. Parents who have seen what the game does to help their children encourage other parents to let their kids try it as well, seeing the positive overall outcome.

Now, more people are acknowledging the educational and mental skills not just Minecraft, but other video games as well, are teaching children and parents, helping to establish and enhance education all around the world.