Iready. understanding supporting evidence video games in the classroom? Power up!

got it from KQED

Explanation:

The games-and-learning landscape is changing quickly. What's happening in classrooms now will look very different in a decade, so what really matters right now is how we frame the conversation. The way we understand the expectations and promises of today’s game-based approaches will have a long-term impact on how we imagine and implement them in the future.

It's critical that teachers, parents, and administrators understand not only the research, but also the way corporations, foundations, and research organizations are thinking about games and learning. There are big players involved in researching the benefits of game-based learning in schools. Companies and foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), Pearson, Inc., Electronic Arts (EA), and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) are all involved. Each has a different role in the matter and teachers have different perceptions of what those roles are.

We have a sense of what research says about the general benefits of gaming, so now we'll look at summarizing a bit of the scant research that’s specific to the classroom.

Some of the most significant research on game-based learning is done by GlassLab (the Games and Learning Assessment Lab), which was established with a “significant investment” from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in cooperation with the MacArthur Foundation. GlassLab designs and implements game-based formative assessments which, according to SRI, “are being developed in response to the climate of student disengagement that currently exists in many classrooms.” The concept is simple: kids like video games and the hope is that “by applying Evidence Centered Design (ECD), the game-based formative assessments address the needs of both students and teachers for reliable and valid real-time actionable data within a motivating learning environment.”