April 2007 — Features
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Gaming :: Eat Breakfast, Drink Milk, Play Xbox
Often the students chosen as leaders are those most in need of honing their social skills, Shasek says. She tells of one boy who rarely attended school, “and when he did go, he would always sleep. He was tattooed, pierced, looked different from the other kids, and was just so angry all the time. When the program was introduced at his school, he didn’t want anything to do with the dance mats. I knew that Guitar Hero helps students with ADD and ADHD and those with balance problems, because of the special pad they have to stand on, so I convinced the teacher to put this boy in charge of Guitar Hero.”
SOUND BODY, SOUND MIND: In one study,
students who did aerobic exercise before a test
scored better than students who received
tutoring instead.
The teacher says the move paid off instantly. “That got him coming to class,” says Julie Mann, an instructor at Success Academy, a small learning community in Redmond, OR. “He really enjoyed the game and was very proactive in getting it set up. There was an immediate change.”
In Mann’s experience, good gaming helps convince kids’ of their academic potential. “They think they can’t do it. Then they use the games and you can see them building their confidence in knowing they can do it. And that transfers into the classroom setting. I see it as a psychological thing—‘Yes, you can do this. And you can do these other things, also.’”
According to Shasek, schools that have implemented Generation FIT report an overall increase in student participation, a drop in absenteeism, and a positive change in general attitude, as well as an increase in motor skills and coordination.
“We are always trying to manage fitness and learning,” Shasek says. “When the body-brain [connection] is out of balance because of poor nutrition and lack of physical activity, students aren’t in a good learning state—their retrieval and retention of memory is poor. Interactive gaming makes a huge difference.”
The Name of the Game
Although incorporating gaming into curriculum is still considered avant garde to some, the argument against it is starting to lose relevance. As technology evolves, and games take on more sophistication and tap in to so many skill sets—and the positive research piles up—the scales are leaning so far in gaming’s favor that naysayers are beginning to seem simply out of touch, or just plain stubborn.
Susan Haydock, gifted and talented consultant at the School District of Random Lake (WI), believes that eliciting greater acceptance of gaming from educators and parents may simply be a matter of changing the term itself, which lacks seriousness.
