Computers and Video Games in Education By: Nikki Corey, Kelly Schnieders, Amanda Peter, Jessica Peter INTRODUCTION The topic we chose to research was Computers and Educational Video Games in the classroom. Throughout our research we found that teachers are using video games more frequently in the classroom. Research shows that video and computer games seemed to be beneficial to learning. Educational games and computers are beneficial to learning because they involve auditoraly, visual, kinesthetic, and tactile learning. They also give clear learning goals , instant feedback, provide broad experience, and allow students to practice different opportunities than they normally would have. Some research shows that video/computer games have negative effects on students, like anti-social tendencies, not teacher directed, and poor social skills, but the positive effects outweigh the negative effects. We wanted to find out if college students now thought games were beneficial to them when they were in school. METHOD Our survey was created with Survey Monkey and sent out through email to random college students. The college students that we surveyed were from Winona State and around the ages of twenty to twenty three. The survey was sent out to a majority of females but males were also included. We got a total of twenty three results back from the survey. We used different types of questions in our survey to get a better understanding of the topic and our participants. We used open ended questions and closed questions. The questions we used for our survey were: 1. Are you a college student? -Yes -No What is your gender? -Male -Female How often did you play video/computer games in grades K-12? -Often -Sometimes -Never If so, what kinds of games do you remember playing? -Open Ended If you did not play video games, do you wish you would have? What kind of positive effects do you think result from playing video/computer games? -Gives student feedback -Multiple difficulty levels depending on the students skill -Random elements of surprise -Emotionally appealing to fantasy -Games can be open-ended to creativity -Players may not realize they are leaning something because it is fun -Games relate to verbal information to both visual images and action -Allow a sense of control and flexibility -Use imagination What grades do you think video/computer games benefit the most? -K-4 -5-8 -9-12 Do you think video/computer games are beneficial to kids in this generation? -Yes -No What kind of negative effects do you think could result from playing video/computer games? -Takes away from social interactions -Not teacher directed -Can’t ask for direct help -Takes away from the child’s other studies -May be addictive -Child may become less confident and less sociable -May become too use to working with a computer and may not work well with actual person -I don’t see a problem -Other: What subjects do you think educational video/computer games work best in? -Math -English -Social Studies -Science -Arts (Choir, Band, etc.) RESULTS We used three graphs to help show our results from the survey questions. We picked three questions that would help explain our topic better and show how meaningful people think video games and computers are. Are results are below. CONCLUSION From our results we have concluded that educational video/computes games are beneficial in the classroom. Not only do they allow students to learn new skills they also allow for instant feedback. Most of the time students do not even realize they are learning because they are having fun. There is some research that shows there are some negative effects like poor social skills, developing anti-social tendencies, and it is not teacher directed, still the positive outcomes outweigh the negative effects. Now that we know that video/computer games are beneficial we want to know exactly how students are benefiting from them, what kind of progress are they making, and how long it takes for progress to be effective. Even though our graphs show that most people think that math is the most beneficial subject for video games, participants also believed they benefited all subjects. REFERENCES Mitchell, A. & Savial-Smith, C. (2004). The Use of Computer and Video Games for Learning. Retrieved February 12, 2009, from www.masternewmedia.org Video Games in Education. (2005). Retrieved February 12, 2009, from Federation of American Scientists Website: www.fsa.org Gee, James. (2005). What Video Games Can Teach Us About Making Students Want to Learn. Retrieved February 12, 2009, from www.edletter.org In this graph we found that 95.5% of the people we surveyed thought that math was the best subject for educational games. In this graph we found that 91% of the people we surveyed thought that video and computer games in education were beneficial in this generation. In this graph we found that the majority of the people thought that the most beneficial factors were that the games were open ended and most kids didn’t realize the games were educational.