Posts Tagged ‘game’
The essential components for a good education are reading, writing and basic computational skills.
Among these three reading is considered the most important. It’s necessary to use creativity and patience to teach reading to children.
Nowadays, with internet and others media invading our lives, the pleasure of reading a book seems lost. However, present and past studies show the importance that reading has in student success rates and also prove that forcing children to read yields poor results.
A new approach to this problem is needed to find a new and more effective method of teaching reading.
When you teach child reading, you should use variety of methods and resources for a well-rounded education.
Some educators obtained great results using educational games :
A lot of methods of teaching reading includes reading games and clever gaming situations to help children memorize letters and familiarize with the language.
Kids learn more when they enjoy the educational experience, that’s why reading games are really effective to improve their skills.
For a kid, a boring standard lesson can’t be catchy as playing a reading game, and this is the reason why fun learning is more effective and interesting than old teaching methods.
Also the contribute of the family is important , but the teacher’s methods are crucial to create an overall educational experience.
The video below shows how reading games for kids can be used; a specific game could provide oral reading, another one could teach how to share the contents with the group, another one could involve the class into a recital.
The “Crazy Professor” video shows a game based reading seminar adopted by many American schools to develop reading comprehension among their young students.
This a clear evidence of how educational games can help children to learn the language and enjoy their reading lessons.
Games theory is a disciple that studies the problem of the interdependence between the players of the same game.
The behaviour analysis of game players is called strategic interaction and is used in Business studies to understand complex aspects of some kinds of markets and to build descriptive models based on subjects’ behaviours in uncertain situations.
For example, the famous “prisoner’s dilemma” is one of the main problems in game theory and is used to explain the reasons of a certain player’s choice rather than another one.
Originally developed by Merrill Flood e Melvin Dresher, the prisoner’s dilemma is based on the following riddle:
Two men are arrested by the cops, but they don’t have sufficient evidence to incriminate them:
for this reason, the cops decide to lock the two prisoners in different rooms and visit them separately to make a deal.
- If one of them testifies (defects) against the other he will obtain the liberty and his crime partner will be sentenced to 10 year in jail.
- If both remain silent, the will convicted to six months jail sentence.
- If each betrays the other both of them will receive a five year jail sentence.
So prisoners have to choose if betray the other or remain silent with the reassurance that nobody will ever know that he betrayed his partner before the end of the trial.
Now the fundamental question is: how should the prisoners act?
The game theory explains this dilemma with the help of Pareto optimality, a concept developed by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who studied the economic efficiency.
The best choice for both the prisoners is to play in accord with the dominant strategy and confess their crime. This is the only way to contain the damages and the risks of be betrayed first by the other, minimizing the risk of a 10years jail sentences.
This interesting slide is a good introduction to the game theory study.
Education and game therapy: role game as a complex system of interactions and goals.
Posted on: May 5, 2009
A role game is a unique world where individuals put their skills to interpret a fiction plot and explore its hidden and tricky aspects, developing actions and strategies to became “experts” users of their fantasy alter egos; strong and well shaped characters able to challenge all the dares of the game.
Role game has two different kinds of authority in its hierarchy:
The Dungeon Master and the players’ characters.
The Dungeon Master has the power to influence all the player’s choices in the game with the application of the rules. This kind of situation is similar to school dynamics of interactions , where the teacher can be viewed as a Dungeon master and the scholars as the players of the game; that’s why in a lot of educational contests, role game is often used to teach and develop students’ skills.
Role play is a builder mechanism of destiny, faith, mission, and players have to build deep competences and overcome hard difficulties to win the prize of best in class.
Role play is an exactly metaphor of the real world where you have to be smart and work hard to obtain success in your professional and personal life; for this reason role game can favourite a goal oriented personality and prepare young people to the harsh and difficulties of our modern society.
Pedagogies and Educators agree on the fact that a kid playing a role game can learn commitment and improve his interior strength and of course have a lot o fun.
I personally think that role game is a great educational tool especially for those teachers and parents that have to deal everyday with exuberant teenagers and problematic children.
Games for your mind 
Gaming comments