Problem Solved

We've all been there. Frustrated, heated over the fact that we can't figure this problem out. We've worked on it for hours, tried every different way we could think of, asked our friends and parents to no avail. Then it clicked, finally it hit us as we were giving up just how to do it right. Most everyone agrees that these are learning experiences more powerful than something that just makes sense to us right away. And it is these kind of situations that can occur not only in the educational world but in the virtual world as well. Video games have long been considered evil by parents and educators alike. As I've talked about before parents often lay blame on video games for causing their children to think more violently or act more aggressively.
Here at Miami there is constantly a cry out to get students to think more critically and in my experience my ability to think critically has been substantially more influenced by playing video games than my schooling. Our education system needs some sort of reform, I went to a high school that was rated as one of the best in Ohio and yet I don't feel like I was ever challenged to critically think. My classes were filled with memorization of facts and formulas that I would need to be able to regurgitate later. Filled with multiple choice tests when I think we all realize the real world will not be so kind with only four options. The free reign offered in video games to solve problems can be educationally beneficial.
Rebecca Haag Guyne in her article titled "The Educational Benefits of Video Games." talks about how video games can impact the youth and the possibility that educators may begin to look towards the virtual world. Often the youth are found trying to beat a difficult challenge in a video game for hours but if for school work they often give up. She speaks of an intrinsic motivation to beat the game that should be capitalized in the school. The concept of learning from your mistakes is also something that has been lost in our current educational system. When someone fails a test or misses a question there is no second effort, generally just worry about the affect that will have on their GPA and future in the academic world. In the virtual world when someone fails there is opportunity to try again immediately. There is immense value in being able to learn what you did wrong and fix that problem, and this is something that our current system does not offer often.
Video games need to stop being addressed as this compulsive evil that is ruining the lives of the youth and rather as something that can enrich their learning experience. There have been hundreds of studies claiming that video games in the classroom is something that needs to be pursued yet our society fails to implement. Possibly it comes from our fear of admitting that we are wrong and the realization that we can change our system, that we have infinite attempts to make our educational system right. Maybe we could all learn from the virtual world.