The link between gaming and learning

Recently, I did an intensive course on children’s learning. It was the best course I’ve experienced in a lifetime of learning about children.

Actually I was looking after six family members aged between five and eleven while their parents went shopping. What an experience!

These are children of the digital age. They had brought along their Nintendo DS and Wii, their Playstation, iPods and MP3s. As they interacted in the little virtual worlds they quickly created, I watched and learnt.

Some of them had some new items and I was fascinated to see how knowledge and skills were shared across the different ages. All were highly motivated. They wanted to play. Learning had an immediate purpose. Everyone was active, no one sat listening to instructions - the games and activities were mastered on the run.

None of these young learners and teachers shared my fear of pressing buttons without being sure of what the consequences would be. I was sitting amongst risk-takers. A mistake was not a cause for shame but just a challenge to try a different way or to ask someone else for help.

How deeper learning occurs

One of the jargon terms in education today is metacognition – the process of reflecting on what is actually happening as we learn and teach. I saw this in action in these young children as they taught each other how the games worked and how unfamiliar tools could be easily mastered.

The whole learning process was about making connections: the children themselves interacted; they linked new problems and old solutions; they shared, collaborated and demonstrated the necessary skills to each other.

Above all, they practised. Any new skill was used again and again, until it was thoroughly mastered and then demonstrated. Look!  Look! This is what you do! Here was a real-life, animated textbook on how children learn. What was strange was that the only professional teacher present was an unskilled observer.

They tried to get me to join in. They’d teach me, they said. And I did try. But I was slow and uncertain, fearful of making errors, needing my hand held and my fragile confidence boosted. They shouted encouragement, overlooked my foolishness, cheered my simple achievements and reassured me that it was only a game.

When the parents returned, I tried to explain something of what I had just experienced. Yes, they said, they were sure it was wonderful but it was all a bit beyond them. They just hoped that all this technology didn’t interfere too much with the children’s education.

Author: Barry Dwyer

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