Gamification and Other Types of Education

   The educational system in the United State is a vast topic to talk about. One cannot simply talk about the American Educational system without discussing the types of education and the theories for improving it. Education is not just a topic of how many people graduate from high school or how high of grades someone gets, but about how much someone learns and how they apply what they learn to everyday life. Education is not just about the numbers, it is about the people.

    A lot of the problems of the educational system have their root in not getting a child's attention while in the class room. Getting an education has been viewed as a chore or a job to children with the teaching of subjects that children view as useless and by making the primary motivation for success the fear of failure. What I have found is that we need to encourage improvement rather than discourage mistakes. For example, when you play video games you will make mistakes. Weather it is jumping to your doom or blowing up or not coming in first for the race, all video games give you chance after chance to try and improve yourself with the only punishment being to start over from the beginning. I am sure we know someone or know someone who knows someone who loves to play video games, you yourself might be one of those people but one of the largest audiences in the video game industry is children in school. Children want to succeed and are willing to learn what to do to succeed. So why not take a page from an industry that drives themselves on grabbing and keeping the attention of children while teaching? Minecraft for instance has taught kids geometry, architecture, and physics all while being fun.

      Another idea is sending kids to different kinds of schools. Rather than sending your child to public school, parents have the option to send their kids to a Waldorf school, a religious school, or home school them. While these school might cost more money, they have been proven to be better schools then public schools. Now, that is not to say they are better than all public schools, but statistically children who come from these types of schools do better. This gives children a better opportunity to go to a good college and to have a love for learning.

     Education is not a simply a black and white issue. While these might not be the best solutions to all people but it will help some people. These are simply ideas that should be used in our educational system, or at least tried in our educational system. We cannot continue our same 200 year old educational system. We as the human race need to adapt to the growing influence of technology in our day to day lives. If not for our sakes, then for our childrens.

 


http://www.edutopia.org/blog/gamification-in-education-vicki-davis
http://www.ed.gov/
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2014/03/18-brown-center-report-loveless?cid=GS_Reports_Search-Reports-BrownCenterEducation-US_41716535675&gclid=CPyY3NTqjb4CFahAMgod0zIAqQ