Innovation Profile 081

Games create emotional involvement

Young people learn better about personal and health issues when they have some emotional involvement with the activity they are doing. To generate this they need choice to pursue the aspects that interest them.

Games are a good way to enable this. Different kinds of games, such as action games, exploration or quizzes lend themselves to different approaches in the classroom. ICT enables games to be introduced very flexibly and controllably to aid learning in any subject.

Look at the examples shown on the 4Learning website (http://www.channel4.com/learning/microsites/L/lifestuff/index.html). The exploration game on human rights allows students to find different examples which they can then share with each other. The action game on sexual health is a fun activity around which information that it is difficult to present directly can be provided. The careers quiz uses competition to present information that students might not otherwise seek.

In this area of education it is important to open students' eyes to things they have not considered. Once interest is aroused it is more likely they will then explore these topics more deeply. However, this is surely also true of many other subjects taught in schools/colleges.

Because these games are ICT-based they are accessible from any web connection, privately or with colleagues. This leads one to consider what the role of the classroom and teacher should be when information and ideas can be explored in a much more open-ended way out of the classroom.

It used to be possible to identify a body of knowledge that all young people should be exposed to. With the massive growth of knowledge it is very hard to justify why one topic should be considered more important than another; why the curriculum should include some topics and exclude others.

Surely the most important role of teachers and schools/colleges is not knowledge transmission but to open students' eyes and to inspire them to explore and learn more deeply. With out-of-class access to online learning opportunities growing so rapidly, we should surely re-consider the best balance between inspiring learning and transmitting knowledge.

The 4Learning Company Profile on our web site will give you an overview of the company and a list of other Innovation Profiles connected with it.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

_________________________________________________________________________________________