November 2017 - Infosavvy21

By Ryan L. Schaaf

This post was originally posted here. Reposted with permission from Amplify Games.

During sporadic times in my life, I would have labeled myself a gamer. I started with the classic Atari 2600 in the early 1980’s (no old jokes, please). As I developed through my adolescence, the video game industry continued to evolve. The Atari 2600 made way for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the NES made way for Sony’s PlayStation, the Playstation gave way to the Super Nintendo, then PC games, then the Xbox and so on.

Today, my children have access to a wide variety of game types on various platforms – access is quickly becoming less of a barrier for gameplay. Although my boys and I enjoy a wide variety of activities, we love to play games together. Games, both digital and non-digital, are an incredible draw for so many people.

Playing digital games is an immensely popular form of entertainment. Simple real-world observations will attest to gaming’s connection to our youth. Go to a restaurant such as Buffalo Wild Wings and the restaurant passes out tablets for its patrons’ children to use. And on each tablet (besides germs and BBQ sauce) are digital games ready to engage children in gameplay; allowing their parents to have a conversation that doesn’t involve Barney or the Teletubbies. This recurring pattern of turning over mobile devices to children is occurring everywhere. A quick scan at restaurants, in the backseat of cars, or in their own homes helps draw a simple, crystal-clear conclusion – our youth love to ingest media.

“Seventy-two percent of children age 8 and under have used a mobile device for some type of media activity such as playing games, watching videos, or using apps.” (Common Sense Media, 2013)

These children, the members of the always-on generation, are growing up with hundreds of ways to consume and produce information using media.

The digital games of today are visually more appealing, contain better storylines, are developed using better technology, encourage both single and team gameplay, and are easier for new players to adopt than classic games from the past. Today’s digital games are products of an incredibly powerful and awe-inspiring market that have helped spawn “a gaming culture”.

The gaming industry is a booming and lucrative one. After all, there are between 1.75 to 2.1 billion people in the world that play games (Levin, 2016; McKane, 2016). Over the years, the number of new gamers adopting the pastime has steadily increased as more and more countries embrace new technologies. Market research firm Newzoo projected global revenue would reach over 128 billion dollars by the year 2020; an overall compound annual growth rate of 6.2%. The mobile gaming sector accounts for about 42% or 46.1 billion dollars of this revenue. (McDonald, 2017)

Gaming Projected Revenue

Source: Newzoo, 2017

If we focus specifically on the United States, then the data is quite compelling and convinces us that the old barriers and stigmas associated with gaming are rapidly disintegrating. First, 150 million or roughly about 59% of people in the United States spread over a vast variety of backgrounds, ages, genders, socioeconomic statuses play games.

About 65% of U.S. households are home to at least one person who plays 3 or more hours of video games a week. (ESA, 2015)

Next, the preconceived notion that a gamer is a teenage boy playing in a dark basement at night all alone is no longer accurate. It’s true that about 99% of teenage boys do play games at least weekly – that is a no-brainer for many of us to accept. However, the surprising statistic is that 94% of teenage girls also play games weekly. (Lenhart, Kahne, et al., 2008) Here’s a question to consider (No Googling) – What is the average age of a gamer in the United States? 10 years-old? 15 years-old? Maybe 20 or 25? All wrong – the answer is 35 years old. (ESA, 2015) So, more and more people; young and old, boy and girl, novice and expert are jumping into stories, sending game requests through social media, fighting foes, traveling through time, and finding hidden objects in an ever-expanding global culture. A culture that is growing with no signs of slowing down.

This post was originally posted here. This article is reposted with permission.

By Ryan L. Schaaf

Have you ever observed a person playing a video game? Have you ever witnessed the intense range of emotions, extreme task commitment, engagement, and focus players experience as they smash buttons and hold on to their game controllers for dear life? My ten-year-old son, Connor, amazes me with his proficiency in playing games on the family game console or his tablet. I was guilty of starting Connor on this early path to gaming. At the ripe old age of 2, Connor was visiting Starfall.com to learn about phonics and letter recognition. This interactive site was the gateway to more advanced gaming experiences such as Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Star Wars Legos, and most recently, Minecraft.

What was truly amazing with Connor’s gameplay was the amount of content he was learning. However, this learning was a side effect of his fun. Connor discovered digital games had a lot to teach him. Similar to educational books and videos, Connor considered games an educational media format — one that will continue to evolve in its presentation and message for its players for many decades to come. In fact, Connor’s younger brother, Ben, is learning how to game. It puts some credence into the popular proverb, “the family that plays together, stays together.”

Digital games are a powerful factor in the lives of so many people. Whether we observe a committed gamer, spending 20+ hours a week playing Call of Duty or Halo; or a casual gamer, playing Clash of Clans or Candy Crush in their spare time, games are an extremely popular form of media. As gaming evolves, its purpose is changing. Games are no longer considered just an entertaining pastime. A growing body of research (which will be shared in this series) is identifying games as extremely powerful tools for modern-day teaching, learning, and assessment.

Quality digital learning games promote the development of soft skills; the skills so many educational visionaries (Sir Ken Robinson, Ian Jukes, Sugata Mitra, Tony Wagner, and Marc Prensky to name a few) identify as being crucial for our children to develop in order to thrive in the modern world after their academic careers are over. During gameplay, players develop skills in problem-solving, communication, perseverance, strategic planning, information processing, and adaptability to name a few.

Try to envision a scenario where the younger members of the digital generation play to learn. They would take risks, work productively alone or in groups, strive to improve, focus on a single task for an extended period of time, fail without stigma, persevere through challenges, work towards short and long-term goals, and learn through experiences rather than absorbing dry, unconnected facts – all while having fun during the process.

Today’s generations have become experts at analyzing gameplay, interpreting storylines, and ingesting raw game data. If parents and educators could take advantage of gaming’s popularity and positive attributes during learning, then edification would become an epic journey for our children.

Many living in Connor’s generation, the digital generation, will never experience a world without Mario, Master Chief, or The Sims. Outside of schools, they play hours of video games each week. While playing these games in their spare time, they are extremely focused, they take on all challengers, work collaboratively, solve problems, receive instant feedback and gratification, and ingest and retain a large amount of information quickly with amazing accuracy during recall. If these attributes can be transferred to academics, then we will cultivate a generation ready to take on the world.

This post is the first in a 12-part series entitled Digital Games: Learning Through Gameplay. In this series, parents, educators, and other stakeholders invested in the success of the digital generations will: examine the ubiquitous, pervasive nature of digital games and their grasp upon the digital generations.

-define the essential vocabulary associated with digital games, digital game-based learning, gamification, and other related terms.

-analyze the current research related to digital gaming and learning.

-compare and contrast the various platforms digital games are played on and their potential for individual, small-group, or large-scale digital game-based learning implementation.

-examine the criteria for selecting quality digital games for instruction.

-analyze the various ways digital games can be used by learners at home or incorporated into classroom instruction at school.

-observe testimonials of digital game-based learning in various academic programs.

Please join us as we dive headfirst into the educational potential of learning through digital gameplay