DigiPlay 4: Teaching with, Learning from Computer Games

Friday 28th January 2005
London Knowledge Lab
23-29 Emerald Street
London

Game over or level one completed? The challenges and opportunities of games in the classroom

Tim Dumbleton

This presentation will focus on the opportunities and difficulties of using games in the classroom, and provide some thoughts about the directions of both school based education and the games industry.

I will first of all draw out some of the key findings of recent research and compare this to the bigger picture of the current embedding ICT in learning and teaching agenda. I will also look at the issues related to the environments of formal learning compared to leisure use of games.

Secondly, I will look longer term at how the likely future directions of formal education and the games industry may present new challenges and opportunities for learning.

Finally, I'll provide an overview of Becta's approach to this area as the lead government agency for ICT use in education.

I would like to highlight that this presentation will probably raise more questions than answers, and I intend to provide plenty of opportunity for discussion and input.

Tim was involved in setting up Becta's Computer Games and Education project in 2001. This project provided an initial assessment of the potential value of commercial games in various classroom contexts. Since the close of this project in 2002, I have maintained Becta's links with games industry organisations such as TIGA and ELSPA. I also keep an overview of related research and projects. My personal motivation comes from being a games player since the early eighties, and realising that what I doing at home (both playing and programming simple games) was having some impact on my own understanding of what I was doing at school. (see: http://www.becta.org.uk/research/research.cfm?section=1&id=519)

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