While it may sound like your child's wildest dream come true, video experience are quickly becoming part of the everyday scholastic curriculum in classrooms nationwide. The reasoning is simple, if kids feel entertained while working to learn hard to understand or coping with abstract concepts, video games help to illustrate and educate in a medium many students already enjoy.
As reported in the Washington Post, high schoolers in Fairfax County, Virginia are already learning about business ethics and negotiations in a virtualized oil spill game, solving math problems in a first-person shooter (sans guns) and discovering biology.
It's all part of one of the latest buzzworthy trends called "serious games." Rather then focus on in-game activities with little real world repercussions, businesses, schools and even the military are already using serious games to train soldiers how to heal the wounded during combat, technicians are seeing how to fix complex commercial airliners and environmentalists can use video game models to test different ways to save real-world protected areas.
For instance, Immune Attack, created as a free downloadable from the Federation of American Scientists, uses hard science to illustrate how the human body fights infections and pairs high schooler's classroom knowledge with their in-game targeting skills to eradicate illness. Without the classroom knowledge, they don't progress as fast or as far in the game, which leads them back to the books or teachers in search of guidance.
Well-known business accounting and consulting firm, Deloitte has even gotten into the serious games business with Virtual Team Challenge: Spill!. The game places players in the role of a consultant to help the officials of New City cope with an ecological disaster. During the assignment, players learn about business ethics, negotiation and the correct way to fix the disaster. To spice it up, students at high schools nationwide are competing to win a sizable donation, in their name, to the United Way. During last year's competition, the top three schools earned over $230,000 in the game.
As school districts seek new and cost effective ways to teach their students, video games may soon be a part of each child and young adult's learning life. And as serious games grow beyond the work place, don't be surprised if they become a part of your professional life as well.
