Guidance for educators

December 2006
Richard Sandford, Mary Ulicsak, Keri Facer and Tim Rudd, Futurelab

A series of guidance cards which highlight some key findings, the views and thoughts of participating teachers, and raise some important questions that might help others to successfully use such games in the classroom setting.

These guidance cards are available to download in pdf format - see box below. On this page you'll find text from the first card as an example.

1. Why use games?

Recent statistics found 62% of students said they would find games motivating (Ipsos MORI survey, Feb-May 2006), and 59% of teachers would consider using games in the classroom (Ipsos MORI survey, Nov 2005).

“The pupils enjoyed the project as much as I did, because it gave me time to take care of each student, which is sometimes not easy in normal lessons.”

“The improvement of their skills in working as a team was enormous.”

“I really enjoyed doing this project, it allowed me to do something a bit different.”

“A bonus of the game is that you can do many virtual experiments in a very short time with results that are much better than physically doing the experiments… On the other hand you have to keep in mind that these are only virtual experiments and that of course can not entirely replace hands-on experiments.”

“Ultimately we were heading for the situation where we had 30 people in a room focused on a screen. And that’s a fairly safe place to be. Whereas 30 people in a room fiddling around with boards and counters and god knows what, or something else, could have been much more difficult to keep tabs on and to keep focused on I think.”

In the UK, educational policy makers have recently funded the development of commercial games for use in educational settings, and a publication from European Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), supported by the DfES, on games and education is due autumn 2006.

Or not…

“You’d get more sense of history by a trip to a museum!”

22% of students think that computer games should not be used in the classroom (Ipsos MORI survey, Feb-May 2006).

Questions:

1. Why do you want to use a game - to motivate your students, teach something complex, because you like playing games, you think the visual aspect would be fun etc?
2. What aspects of a game would engage or motivate your students?
3. What learning goals might be achieved and how might the use of computer games address these better than other methods?
4. Do you have the desire for the challenge of learning a game and identifying how it can fit into your lessons?

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