Jane
McGonigal, a keynote speaker at the 2013 ISTE convention in San Antonio,
believes that “games do a better job of provoking our most powerful positive
emotions, like curiosity, optimism, pride, and a desire to join forces with
others.” The more games we play, according to McGonigal, the better off our
world will be. Why? Check out the TED
video of one of McGonigal’s talks.
At ISTE, McGonigal opened the conference by telling
attendees that “games are a space of maximum engagement.” That’s important
because according to research only 44% of high school students say they are
engaged in learning at school. The
speaker encouraged the educators in the audience to think about the ten
emotions (joy, relief, love, surprise, pride, curiosity, excitement, awe and
wonder, contentment, and creativity) that gamers say they have while playing
and to try to create classrooms that evoke these emotions. According to Katie
Ash of Education Week, McGonigal didn’t explain how teachers could put her
ideas to work in the classroom. Bottom line: we know that games work in
learning, but finding appropriate games to use and integrating them into the
curriculum isn’t all that easy.
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