What We Learn from Games
What also went unremarked was how much I was learning by playing these games: basic ideas such as taking turns and developing patience while others completed their turns, the strengthening of simple memory, improved physical coordination, an ability to recognize and act on patterns, the capacity to see what might happen in a few turns if I took one move as opposed to another, resilience when losing, and the kind of strategic thinking that emerges once you realize that Scrabble is both a game of words and a game of placement (where you choose to put your words). Perhaps most important for me, playing games gave me control over something that had a tangible quality to it. Parents and friends couldn’t play for me; I had to make decisions for myself and live with whatever consequences came from those decisions—at least until the end of the game. All paths were available when the board was set up and the pieces distributed. All that mattered then was what I did next.
Notes:
Folksonomies: education games gaming gamification
Taxonomies:
/art and entertainment/music (0.577486)
/education/school (0.488378)
/technology and computing (0.307341)
Keywords:
physical coordination (0.935093 (neutral:0.000000)), basic ideas (0.919647 (neutral:0.000000)), simple memory (0.912410 (neutral:0.000000)), strategic thinking (0.908627 (neutral:0.000000)), tangible quality (0.889906 (positive:0.744564)), games (0.608861 (positive:0.744564)), game (0.588095 (negative:-0.444708)), turns (0.575935 (neutral:0.000000)), words (0.451168 (neutral:0.000000)), resilience (0.398818 (neutral:0.000000)), patience (0.398501 (neutral:0.000000)), strengthening (0.382109 (neutral:0.000000)), Scrabble (0.376826 (neutral:0.000000)), capacity (0.361330 (neutral:0.000000)), kind (0.356384 (neutral:0.000000)), ability (0.350870 (neutral:0.000000)), consequences (0.345602 (negative:-0.444708)), paths (0.345444 (neutral:0.000000)), patterns (0.342599 (neutral:0.000000)), decisions (0.338841 (negative:-0.444708)), placement (0.338544 (neutral:0.000000)), control (0.328768 (positive:0.744564)), Parents (0.323984 (neutral:0.000000)), friends (0.323836 (neutral:0.000000)), play (0.323615 (neutral:0.000000)), board (0.322401 (neutral:0.000000)), decisions—at (0.322209 (negative:-0.444708))
Concepts:
Play (0.984782): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Game (0.869383): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Learning (0.642785): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Games (0.536193): dbpedia
Toy (0.526270): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Board game (0.471383): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Psychology (0.471235): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Motor coordination (0.380625): dbpedia | freebase | yago
Cognition (0.370887): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Dice (0.369838): dbpedia | freebase
Motor control (0.355985): dbpedia | freebase
Level Up Your Classroom: The Quest to Gamify Your Lessons and Engage Your Students