Got game? More and more schools using video games as teaching tools

By Michael Alison Chandler
The Washington Post

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WASHINGTON — Lifelong gamer Russell Alford, 15, usually has to wait until his homework and chores are finished before he can play "Call of Duty 4," but this semester, he got to play another video game at school.

His finance class at Marshall High School in Fairfax County, Va., designed avatars and saved a virtual city from an oil spill — earning points for teamwork, research on the world's water supply, business ethics and negotiating skills.

As Net-generation teachers reach out to gamers, classrooms across the country are becoming portals to elaborate virtual worlds. Business and science classes are sampling sophisticated software that allows students to try out potential careers, practice skills or explore history through simulated missions in national parks, ancient cities or outer space.

Teachers have long yearned for the rapt attention students lavish on mutants and aliens, but stereotypes of video games as violent or brain-numbing have slowed their entry into schools.

While the military and even medical schools are turning to "serious games" or simulations for training, the Software and Information Industry Association estimates that instructional games make up only a tiny portion of the $2 billion-a-year educational software industry.

But lately, researchers and educators say sentiment toward gaming is changing.

Advocates argue that games teach vital skills overlooked in the age of high-stakes tests, such as teamwork, decision-making and digital literacy. And they admire the way good games challenge players just enough to keep them engaged and pushing to reach the next level.

"There is a revolution in the understanding of the educational community that video games have a lot of what we need," said Jan Plass, co-director of the Games for Learning Institute, based at New York University and funded by Microsoft to research how video games can help learning.

The Pew Research Center reported in September that 97 percent of youths ages 12 to 17 play video games, and half said they played "yesterday." Time spent glued to the screen is often particularly high in wired, affluent communities such as Fairfax, Va., where a survey this year showed that almost three out of four students play video games or use the computer an hour or more each night for things not related to school.

A new generation of game designers is borrowing from the sophisticated platforms and stunning graphics that captivate students for hours after school. They hope to channel the kind of feverish determination students exhibit when stealing a car in "Grand Theft Auto" and redirect it toward more wholesome pursuits, such as algebra.

"Dimension M," a suite of math games developed by New York-based Tabula Digita, was created in a first-person-shooter format, though the action figures carry no weapons.

In one game, players aim to stop a biodigital virus from taking over the world while learning about functions and solving equations. Hundreds of schools in Chicago and New York and several Florida school systems are playing the games, which cost $10 to $20 per student for the year.

Another series, "Quest Atlantis," developed by educators at Indiana University, takes students into simulated environments, such as Taiga National Park, where they role-play scientists seeking to learn why rivers are depleted of fish. More than 20,000 students around the world logged on to play the free games in the 2007-08 school year, a fourfold increase from the year before.

Compelling games can help schools compete for students' attention, advocates say, even as many teenagers are tackling complex projects on the Internet in their free time.

Outside of school, kids "are writing fan fiction, blogging, designing clothes," said James Paul Gee, a University of Arizona education professor and author of the book "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy."

"They can become an expert in anything by learning on the Internet, and they can find a community to support it."

To make further inroads into the educational market, video game producers must win over teachers who are loaded down with curriculum demands and pressured to improve student test performance.

Timothy J. Magner, director of educational technology for the Education Department, said games could themselves become powerful assessment tools. Computers can capture data about every player move, he said, and teachers can see "at the mouse-click level" how students make decisions and when they struggle.