technology 9

Digital Gaming 

       Digital games encompass much more than your computer’s Solitaire or Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. Over the last decade, the genre of digital games has exploded to include numerous platforms and designs. Digital games, whether computer-, game console-, or handheld-based, are characterized by rules, goals & objectives, outcomes & feedback, conflict/ competition/challenge/opposition, interaction, and representation of story (Prenksy, 2001) or more simply, “Purposeful, goal-oriented, rule-based activity that the players perceive as fun” (Klopfer, 2008). They are distinguished by two key elements: (1) an interactive virtual playing environment, and (2) the struggle of the player against some kind of opposition. Gaming is already a widespread activity in our culture —more than 45 million homes have video-game consoles (Feller, 2006). Over 154 million Americans play video games (that’s about half of the country’s population) (Emrich, 2005). In a given week, the average eighth-grade boy will play video games for about 23 hours, while the average girl will play about 12—that’s even more time than they spend watching TV (Dawley, 2006). Therefore, one of the most obvious benefits to using these technologies for learning is that students are often already familiar with these interfaces and the “language” of interacting with and utilizing them. Both inside and outside the classroom, some strong examples of powerfully engaging gaming models have emerged. Some have been used quite a bit in the educational setting, while others have mainly garnered popularity in pop culture. We outline some examples of both below.