Video Games In Schools

Video games, first introduced to the world in the 1950s very quickly spread throughout the United States and the world as a hobby, pastime, and career for many people. People of all different walks of life fell in love with the escape presented by video games and sparked the creation of a new industry with the sole purpose of entertaining anybody with the money to afford the systems that could play games. Since the humble beginnings of video games with 8-bit graphics and sounds on small television sets with minimal controllers, the video game industry has grown to demand computer technology at the forefront of human innovation and is now a multibillion-dollar industry. Today, more than forty percent of Americans play video games regularly, …show more content…
The students are unmotivated and aren’t being captivated by the subjects taught to them or the way subjects are taught to them. However, Annetta declared that “Games can motivate passive students to contribute more than they would in a traditional learning environment”. (Annetta pg. 233) Video games can grab the attention of students better than common core or any teacher could because it’s easier to get involved in the learning experience when the user has absolute control over what they are doing. Games give a student the chance to have control over their environment and allow students to move at their own pace and learn in their own way. Video games can bridge the gap between the chalkboard and the students by making learning exciting and making it easier to follow along. When in the middle of a game, the student can stop following another down a well-trod path and start leading their own adventure through a different part of the …show more content…
The games in question are games of the first and third person shooter genre, games in which the play is in the position of a person, such as a soldier, whose goal is to complete missions by shooting through waves of enemies and surviving. This effect of video games has been shown to be untrue in many different studies of young adults and adolescents who play regularly, but now the question comes up, if it’s untrue that video games make people aggressive, could they be used for the opposite and teach people to be caring and kind? In other words, can video games be used to teach ethics? Karen Schrier, in an article written in the Journal of Moral Education, said that there have been studies that have shown, “…The effective use of media in ethics education, such as film, movies and television, literature, and cartoons and comics.” Other strategies that were shown to have the same results were role-playing exercises that involved different scenarios in which the subjects would try to act in a way they thought was appropriate in a certain situation. So, based on that previously conducted research, one might be able to make the leap in logic and assume that the same could be said about video games, seeing as they are not that different from other sources of entertainment. Many video games involve