Using Games as an Educational Medium

[abculatter_2]

So, I'm going to be doing a report on this for a class, as this is a topic of some interest to me, and am just curious what opinions you guys have on the new trend of using games for/in education.

Just some thought kickstarters:
What might this mean for games in the future? Or for gaming companies?
If games become more common place as a productive medium, how might this affect how they are viewed?
What would you think if your or your children's (if you have any) education involved games in the core curriculum?

Also, here's a random article I'm reading about it, which is a nice summary:
http://media.futurelab.org.uk/resources ... Review.pdf
And another:
http://www.amplify.com/viewpoints/video ... d-learning

EDIT: And I just found this video as well: (It's actually an introduction for a class, found here.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe06gJSFj6w#t=164

I was specifically interested in her mention of Minecraft being used for teaching ecology and chemistry , as I've heard of Computercraft being used to teach basic programming, but ecology? In MY Minecraft?

[DaveYanakov]

The web series Extra Credits has a few very good 100 levels discussions about games in education and the benefits of gamification that you may want to check out. I believe that games can be a very engaging way to learn and to reward productivity through the innate competitive spirit.

[Zhil]

We recently made a game that we just threw up on a web site and promoted a bit and it caused over 1000 primary school students to fill out a 30 minute survey on bullying, by presenting the survey as a game. If you have any idea how hard it is to make an 11 year old fill out a 30 minute anything, you understand our joy.

So yeah, hugely important that we gameify online behavior for kids in the same way that we gameify other parts of their education. Presenting knowledge as games (nursery rhimes for example) is a tradition that might be as old as human speech.