How might you incorporate video games in general into the regular curriculum?

How might you incorporate video games in general into the regular curriculum?
The introduction of game-based learning and using games as an educational tool has a highly logic sense to it. Moreover, I love the idea of taking a game that the kids already love, into the classroom.

There might of course be many good games to introduce to the kids at different stages of their education, but the most of the games I have played, and loved, tends to focus on a very small area of curriculum. SimCity Edu might teach us about important topics like Pollution and infrastructure but will be limited to be used a couple of times, preferably in the upper-levels of elementary school. 



Other games focuses on other aspects, like story telling for instance. There might be a huge potential for playing games with a great story, as a great supplement to the traditional reading of a story. A game like The Stanley Parable is a very interesting concept to take into the classroom to teach about many narrative elements. Teachers at Nordahl Grieg high-school in Norway  has done some work on taking a game like The Walking Dead into classroom to teach about philosophy and ethics. Sounds very exciting indeed. Yet again, it narrows down to many hours of gameplay for a limited amount of learning goals.

Since I live and teach in Norway, the language barrier will also make this game even harder to use in its fullest context. 
Therefore, this makes the doorstep for me a little bit higher to introduce all kinds of cool popular games into the classroom, expecting a certain learning goal to come from it. Because I feel this is essential to teaching, that you could use the game to reach the learning goals you have for the students. Not the other way around by taking whatever the game is supposed to teach, and hope the kids will pick it up.
Minecraft is one of those games you can take into the classroom as a tool. You can think of it as an empty canvas, where you can paint the entire learning process towards the goals you want them to learn.

This open sandbox games opens up a completely new (virtual) world to teaching. Suddenly you are given a chance for your kids to visit ancient Rome, and meet up with legionaries and emperors in a completely new interactive way. You can download already created worlds, or you can let your kids create their own versions of the Roman Empire while you introduce them to mathematical terms like area and perimeter. You can fill it with information and links to other resources for them to learn even more. You can let them create stories of their own, by letting them “place” a pretend-family in one of the houses. Then you can get them to write their “life-story”. Or what about trying to recreate some the Arts at that period. How about making an artwork of your own, based on what you know about them. 

These thoughts are inspired by one of John Millers projects as you can hear him talk about it at Colin Gallaghers wonderful Minechat series. Well worth a visit for inspiration.

The possibilities is limited by your (and others) imagination. 

And by TIME.

Because it is no secret that things like this takes a lot of time. Both during planning, but also during the “game phase” and the “post-game phase”. 
I am struggling a lot with this part, because my ideas are far greater than what time I have to spend. 

I think it might be important to try to include the kids in as much of the process as possible. However, this is very challenging with a bigger group. I have a class of just eight kids, where we have just started using the game, and I see far greater potential to get everyone included in this group than in the group where we are 20 students.
I love the way students responds to games. The cooperative aspects is also worth it by itself. I had two students today that say they “HATE EACH OTHER” being the best functional group in the class. Why? Well because both of them love Minecraft, and then they seem to forget that both they hate each other. It was the first ever time I dared to put them together this year… Making it one of those teacher moments you live for. On the other hand I had one of the girls crying, because she could not work with her partner… 


I am not sure of this even remotely answered the question it was supposed to, but at least it became my “blog-post” of game based learning, so I guess it counts for something.