Games Replacing School Textbooks

Photo: greenasian

In an older post on how I outgrew video games, one of the things I mentioned was how games have many substantial capabilities that other media do not.  But what exactly are these capabilities?  Can they be used for anything other than sniping n00bs and defeating winged lizards?

If we want to learn, many students and professors turn to textbooks and workbooks, time tested methods of conveying information for absorption.  When the task is to teach, then we seek out the media that we suppose will serve us best.

But what if textbooks and lectures are no longer the most productive means of instruction?  There are countless known (and still many unknown!) ways that games can improve our lives above and beyond the scope of other media.

Memorization versus mastery

Throughout our lives, we memorize material.  From elementary school through graduate school, students are primarily professional memorizers.  Their job is to take material, facts, and formulas, cram it into their minds until the exam, and then regurgitate it.  Our society has deemed, through a long history with education, that this is the best and most efficient way to communicate information to students and hold them accountable for that information.  Unfortunately, this often results in students seeking only a surface level understanding of a topic, and focusing more on learning the skill of test-taking itself, rather than the skill of understanding the material they’re covering. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »