Can games be educational? (Spam only for topic, if at all!!)

[Kipi]

So, while waiting for Civ4, I remembered article about Civ3 being used in educational purpose in at least one university. I'll post the dircet link here as soon as I find it, but surely it can be located somewhere from www.civfanatics.com.

So, this made me wonder if games really can be used to teach. I know some games are used in some jobs, like flight simulators used to train pilots and so on.

So, my question to you, as you all surely have played a lots of games (), what do you think of this? Can games be used to educate, how well those can be used, and which games do you think could be used to this?


PS. If there is already a topic for this, then please close this one

[Fiberfar]

Many games are a good source for learning some basic things about something. Lets say you play a FPS about the Vietnam war, and the info that the game provides is documented as correct.

I know that many think that AoE II is educational, but I found at least one event in the game that was very wrong in historical view. William Wallace survived the battle of Falkirk, and continued to search for Edward Longshanks. To the best of my knowledge he was betrayed, captured and executed and did not survive that battle.

Of course, games have been made for the purpose of educate the children. I've seen several "Play and learn with...." games. I.e these games give you a task to complete by solving either a mathematical question or mabye a historical question.

I think that some games can be educational. But that those games only proves to be correct for a short while. IMO most of the games today drop the hard riddles that needs to be solved or an historical event that gives the game a date. ( I really like games with historical teachings, even if they are partly wrong. AoE I & II, Empire Earth etc.)

[C Elegans]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kipi So, this made me wonder if games really can be used to teach. I know some games are used in some jobs, like flight simulators used to train pilots and so on. So, my question to you, as you all surely have played a lots of games (), what do you think of this? Can games be used to educate, how well those can be used, and which games do you think could be used to this?

Professional simulators are not games, so I'll leave them out of the discussion. The question "can games be educational" is in my opinion equivalent to the question "can TV be educational". My reply to both would be that yes, of course games/tv/movies/whatever entertainment media can be educational, but usually they aren't since the purpose is not to teach people something but to provide entertainment that can be quickly made into profit for the producer.

I have never seen a computer game that provides better education that simply reading a textbook about the topic in question.

[fable]

Syracuse Language Systems implemented the PhD dissertation of its owner that infants learn well in part because they treat learning as a game. SLS made language-teaching game packs that were enormously popular. But they didn't and couldn't teach grammar, only vocabulary, and only broad (non-nuanced) vocabulary.

So while games can educate, it's perhaps better to specify that some games can, in a limited fashion, and only if approached in the right spirit.