Can Video Games Teach?

   Video games are a very major part of our society. I find it to be actually amazing how quickly they have grown, since they have only been around for about fifty years. In the sense of education, I believe that video games could provide beneficial attributes to education, but on the contrary, give some negative effects. Video games, help people with critical thinking, socializing (for most), and develop key hand eye coordination. Each of these correlate positively with education. The critical thinking can help people think more outside of the box when solving daily problems. The socializing feature of video games allows people to develop key social skills and will benefit them when they go to school, work, or in public situation. 

   The games could easily be integrated into an educational course. For example, if someone were to take game design, it is almost essential that they have played video games to help them have the best features. Games could also be structured to go along with reading, math, and science courses. An example of this would be a game that I played in elementary school. The game involved you answering a math problem, if you go the problem correct, you were able to bowl. Another way games work with education would be for medical research, the game, even though it is rather outlandish, Surgeon Simulator could help medical students learn the procedures for certain surgeries. 

   Some of the negative effects of video games and education are the dependencies. Some students may have certain disabilities inhibiting them from playing the games, thus having them fall behind on the course. Another problem would be that certain people would just play the game and not retain any of the information from the game. I personally, do not want games to be incorporated into my education, because I would much rather learn from doing the task without meaningless steps between problems. Also, I find that reading and being taught something from either a book or a person greatly increases the amount of information that I retain. If I were to be taught strictly from a video game I would not have the same education that I have today. Overall, I believe that video games could positively benefit certain aspects of learning. In general, video games would not be the best choice in practice for learning. The only benefits I would gain from video games being incorporated in my education would be that it would make some subjects more bearable and interesting; otherwise, I would not want video games in my education.