Fun + Education = Serious Gaming

This is Ro Shan here to discuss serious gaming. By what you've seen in the video above you may have already recognized the value of games to real world education. This is just one of the many ways games can be used for educational purposes. Simulation games are already being put to good effect by many organizations around the world to train staff. The military for example uses flight simulation games to prepare pilots to handle a plane. This is also economically efficient compared to having every trainee fly real planes.

Serious gaming also plays a motivational role in teaching. What may seem boring in a lecture may seem much more interesting in a game and besides you also have the advantage of visual aides to help you remember. No person will say its easier to remember the time he had a boring lecture compared to the same thing being taught in a much more practical way demonstrating the same concept. Even if it was essentially the same thing, when taught with a new concept that draws attention its simply a lot more interesting and that much easier to remember.

When we get to it SL is essentially a type of game itself, but one that allows people from around the world to interact in real time. It has greater value as a social learning tool than most other modern methods and it's an intriguing concept for both teacher and student. Education aside it also holds great potential to host activities between schools such as Forensics debate and discussion.

Whether serious games are used as simulations for the real thing or they are used to connect people from around the world they hold a remarkably great amount of yet to be discovered potential. In fact it may well be possible that in the near future serious games will be integrated into our educational system to make learning fun and easy.