UK Education Secretary Wants Games In Classrooms

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I really like this guy's idea of using video games as a learning aid. I'm not sure we'll ever see anything like that in public schools over here though.

In a speech to the Royal Society in London last week, Gove pointed to the works of Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at Oxford University and an advisor to maths games website Manga High. He said: "When children need to solve equations in order to get more ammo to shoot the aliens, it is amazing how quickly they can learn.
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Great, expect the latest version of Mavis Beacon, type and teach pretty soon then
 
Yeah, I have to admit "Math Blasters" didn't exactly reel me into learning math, and it really was pretty much on par with the games at the time. My dad teaching me how to play blackjack however got me to learn adding really quickly.
 
I can remember going back to the early to mid 80s having and using a 48k spectrum computer playing educational games, it even had a printer that used shiny silver paper to print out your scores :)

So using computers in the UK for school has been around for along time in one for or another, but I dont think getting to play crysis 2 or other fps will be on the current curriculum anytime soon, educational games only i should think.
 
In a speech to the Royal Society in London last week, Gove pointed to the works of Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at Oxford University and an advisor to maths games website Manga High. He said: "When children need to solve equations in order to get more ammo to shoot the aliens, it is amazing how quickly they can learn.
Click to expand...

I can already see where the answer to that math problem will hit a snag "I will get an extra 130 rounds of ammo from the dead guy that tried getting through the room before me".
 
I remember a news post here sometime ago about a teacher incorporating Minecraft into their lessons.
 
Something like Khanacademy.org is definitely the most profound way of teaching I have come across. When used in a public classroom environment you see lectures assigned for homework while problems are completed in class using teachers for 1on1 help rather than 1 size fits all lecturing. There is a good TED video on the subject worth watching on the front page of the site.

Mind you this is a little off topic but I still find it relevant all the same.
 
In the old days before computers you learned how to do math because you needed that artillery to land on the other team instead of your own guys, and you really, really didn't want to give the other team a chance to land their artillery on you first. "Not dying" can be quite a motivator.
 
really-simple-keyboard.jpg
 
Honestly I think the problem with education doesn't stem from the lack of technology in classrooms.
A board, white chalk, chairs, desks, pens, pencils and notebooks are all the technology that is needed in my opinion. Even textbooks I found useless until college.
 
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