When Online Gaming Meets Education
Over the years, especially recent years, the popularity of online gaming has skyrocketed. As game quality and variety of gaming increases, more people begin to pick up their own choices for video games to play. There are games like Animal Crossing where you can interact in your own world with in-game characters and build up your own little town on your island however you like. There are also games like Fortnite if you want more of an action game where you can play battle royales against anyone in the world who is also playing the game in a third-person shooter. There is no limit to the types of games you can pick from to play, and that includes the ability to play games for educational purposes.
For years, there has been debate over video games on many different topics and one of those debates is if video games are harmful for kids to be playing. The answer to this debate is no. While not all games are appropriate for children to be playing, there are still thousands upon thousands of games out there that are actually helpful for children to play. As we explored this week, there is a version of Minecraft called Minecraft: Education Edition which, by the definition of the official website “is an open-world game that promotes creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving in an immersive environment where the only limit is your imagination.” Minecraft: Education Edition is an online video game children play to learn while having fun, not being told to sit through a lesson written on a whiteboard that not every child has the attention span for. That also isn’t the only educational video game out there, there are plenty more out there that aren’t as focused on being educational, but it comes with games anyway. Games that teach children problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, patience, and many more things all can be used for educational purposes and help children develop. Parents and teachers simply have to allow children access to those types of games and teach them how to use them effectively and the possibilities to teach children more effectively becomes even more possible.
When it comes to playing video games more for fun, there comes the idea that there do need to be more restrictions on how children are allowed to play. There are many video games out there that are not age-appropriate for children to be playing, a popular example being Grand Theft Auto which includes things like strip clubs, the concept that breaking laws is common, a lot of swearing from all the characters, and themes like sex and drinking that may not be the right thing to expose to young children. Some games also include voice or text chats when playing online with other people around the world that are not the most filtered when it comes to what can be said through them. Most times, those games also offer the option to turn off those abilities so parents can be sure their children can be safe while still being able to play freely. However, there are cases where the opposite can happen as proven by a story I remembered reading last year in which a group of six teenagers playing Fortnite came across a 10-year-old who was playing alone. They found out his birthday was the next day and he wouldn’t be able to have a birthday party or friends over because of quarantine, so they threw him a birthday party in-game themselves to ensure he had a happy birthday still.
Overall, to parents trying to decide how they want their children to be interacting with video games, I would recommend not restricting them from playing video games, but encouraging it because not only do most children find that fun, it can also help them mentally develop as I talked about earlier in the article. I would also recommend to parents and teachers to make sure not to just let the kids play video games all day. Setting limits on how much children are playing is important to make sure that they don’t get addicted and still are able to develop outside of those video games. Interacting with the world offline and spending time in-person with others is important for the development of children as well. Then, I would recommend parents and teachers to make sure they educate themselves on the games their kids are playing or the games they want to play. Not only is it important to understand what type of content the child will be exposed to by playing the game, but it can also be easier to have conversations with kids about what they’re playing. Knowing about the games they are or want to play means you can have conversations about why they can’t play a game too when they may be too young to be playing certain games.
Since I was just a kid in elementary school, I have been playing video games, and since middle and high school, I have begun to play more online games as well. When I was young, one of the main games I remember playing was Endless Ocean: Blue World, a game about being a scuba diver who goes on different adventures as they discover new creatures and parts of the world. I remember that game very well because whenever my sister, who also played the game a lot, and I go to the aquarium now, we can still name a lot of the sea animals we come across because we played that game so much that we memorized the types of fish and certain facts from the game.
Now, in my college days, I have begun to play Minecraft more as it’s an open-world game where you can do almost anything you want. You can choose to be a builder and build impressive structures, you can work with redstone and learn how to make automatic machines with them, or you can simply play survival mode and wander around the world on adventures. There is even the option to add or create mods for the game which adds even more to the game for you to do. In fact, there is even a Minecraft server with the sole purpose of rebuilding the entirety of the University of Minnesota campus. I have gone on it several times to explore and it impresses me every time. It just proves how to possibilities of what you can do with video games is endless.
