Talk:Educational game

Moving article

This article should be moved to "Educational computer and video game" as there is surely are categories of "Educational games" which do not use a computer or video game console. Anyone disagree? --Malcohol 15:58, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Surely a better approach is just to expand this page in such a way that it covers non-electronic games as well? If somebody adds so much information to the article that it looks like it needs splitting, then that would certainly be a split worth considering (though I'd be unhappy with that title, as you can't really have "one computer and video game"). But I think we're a long way off that as yet, so I'd say just let the content grow for now. - IMSoP 17:49, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As I don't have any particular content to add myself, I accept your reasoning. Note that there's already 37 articles that link to this one and the longer it is before a split happens the more drastic any change will be. (Some of these links are due to its presence in the Video Game Genre template.)--Malcohol 13:42, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I clarified (I hope) the introduction of the article, mentioning the article is about "regular" games as well as video games, but (at the moment) primarily deals with the latter. I think I agree with Malcohol; information about the regular kind should be added here as well, until there is enough content to split it of. Otherwise renaming the article would make sense; maybe "computer educational games" or something similar, like computer role-playing game? Of course that would mean reworking a bunch of categories, computer and video game genres, and the like. Retodon8 15:45, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Definition of "educational game"

There seem to be an awful lot of arbitrary German games and children's games in here, and the ones I'm familiar with don't seem any more "educational" than any other game of their type. Given that any card, board or video game has potential educational qualities, would this page be more useful if we redefined educational games as those that were specifically designed to teach people? This wouldn't leave us with very much, but it would at least be meaningful. --McGeddon 02:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The list that I am using when I added these games is the list that Games Quaterly put out in their latest Games and Education edition. The scope and sequence and where to apply these games in education is in there. Education and Games cover and Games QuarterlyPlus I also teach games in schools. Bcc cindy 04:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's useful to simply duplicate a list of games that a single magazine has decided are "educational" - it won't be clear to future editors how to expand or edit that list, and it doesn't give much information to a casual reader (I've played a lot of these games, and don't understand why they're more educational than others). Expanding the article to include the "scope and sequence" would be good, but I assume this strays towards copyright violation if you're just lifting ideas from a magazine.

I think this article really has to become more of an essay about the different types of educational games, supplemented with links to examples, rather than a flat list of titles. Any thoughts on how we should structure this? Dividing educational games into "pre-school", "basic literary/numeracy skills", "supporting curriculum education", "understanding historical events", "government initiatives" and other categories seems like it might be more useful than board/card/misc/video, for a start. --McGeddon 04:30, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I can include scope and sequence, and application information both in the magazine (which I can attribute) and my own applications with school age children. I think we would have to cross reference everything, espcially since certain games have several different applications for different grade/age levels. Though I haven't been on wikipedia long enough to know how to do this. But I think we do need to provide more information and idea generation that just a flat list of titles, just as you've stated. Bcc cindy 04:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I have added an example (see "Chomp" entry) of how we can make this a less flat list of games and more useful to parents and teachers. Bcc cindy 13:37, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I have re-added PlayMasterGuru, used by the public school system in NY and also by parents at home for over 100,000 elementary students. It is a PC Game, it has video, it is certainly educational and designed to help young students pass State tests. It seems to fit all the qualifications. Calling something an advertisement, to me is not enough to arbitrarily remove it, since any link is a form of advertisement. I believe an objective criteria should be established, that everyone agrees on. Thank you...68.68.234.131 16:20, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Rationale for adding advertising tag

I added the advertising template to the article because it definitely reads like a place for those with tenuously notable educational games (other than the very popular ones such as Scrabble) to advertise their game on the World Wide Web. I think that we should have very little advertising on the page, myself. Andy Saunders 20:30, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Elementeo

I came here looking for an entry on Elementeo. Mathiastck 19:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

GH?!

The Guitar Hero series does not actually teach music. The game controller is not an actual guitar of course and you do not learn to read music. I state that it should be removed. 71.202.232.211 04:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Jramirez23

games "used in education"

some games "used in education": civilization 4(history classes) capitalism (corporate training)

this thing is good but doses not fit well in article. All games listed are used in schools. Maybe we need section with title "mainstream games with educational qualities" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.250.34.243 (talk) 19:24, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

"Game"="Computer game"?

Are we considering only computer games in the article, or board games etc. as well? It makes a big difference for linking articles in different languages properly. Articles we are linked to in German and Russian are about games in general, while in Italian and Ukrainian they are about computer games only. In Russian exists another article ru:Обучающая игра, dedicated particularly to computer games. Maybe, we should create a stab about educational games in general in English, and link German and Russian articles to it? Oleksiy.golubov (talk) 18:28, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Merge edutainment, educational game, and educational software

Hi everyone -- please read my discussion of the overlap between edutainment, educational game, and educational software at Talk:Edutainment#Merge edutainment, educational game, and educational software and leave your comments there. Thanks! CaseyPenk (talk) 13:18, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Student Wikipedia Project

Hello wonderful people of Wikipedia! One of my classes for school requires us to identify a Wikipedia page that needs improvement and make some changes based on the talk page. To that end, we, have identified the following potential changes to be made and information to be added. We would greatly appreciate any feedback from the community. Below is the information we propose to add. Thanks Mcgrupp024 (talk) 20:48, 15 November 2012 (UTC) Deesejc (talk) 20:51, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Based on the content of the actual article itself and the discussion from the article’s talk page, we have decided to include some valuable additional information supported by reputable sources. We are hoping to address some of the issues that the Wikipedia community would like to see addressed by providing cited supporting sources. We have also come across many research papers and articles that provide valuable enhancements to the article quality. Here are some of the additions and sources we plan to add:

1 - Educational games are defined as Individual or group games that have cognitive, social, behavioral, and/or emotional, etc., dimensions which are related to educational objectives.

2- More specific examples of educational games were needed for this article. Some educational games under development at Penn State University include:

1- ChemBlaster
2- Trust Me
3- EconU

3- The next issue we wanted to address was how specific learning styles relate to educational games. "…It cannot be denied that a great deal of learning does happen in games. Computer games that are considered “good”(i.e. popular and highly rated) already provide information in various formats, although the preference in most games is for information to be visually presented. By providing information in multiple formats (visual, textual, auditory, etc.), players cannot only choose a style that matches their own preference, but they can also practice their skills in others, and sometimes they do this even without realizing it.

4- "By design, good games support the approaches of concrete learners through a myriad of feedback mechanisms: visual, auditory, textual, progress charts, etc. while abstract learners can ignore which ever feedback mechanisms they choose – often by simply switching them off. Abstract learners can develop theories and test them out within games in ways not feasible in real life. The “reset” button remains available to both whenever they get into trouble.

ECONOMICS

WHAT IS DEMAND? WHAT IS ECONOMICS? WHO GAVE THE DEFINITION OF ECONOMICS? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.255.61.182 (talk) 09:39, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Adding sources to Application section

A student in a class that is part of the Wikipedia Education Program added references and content related to known researchers and studies about games and learning. This was deleted for a reason that seems to be in error, that the sources used are primary sources, but this was not exactly the case. The student provided a summary of existing research, and was not just using "primary sources" to back up any statements:https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Educational_game&diff=597167840&oldid=597163815

I undid this because I thought this was not what was intended: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Educational_game&diff=prev&oldid=597675282

I think there is confusion and misunderstanding here. I think this editor wanted some clarification (adding some narrative preface to this section, i.e. "Recent research has shown that..." or links to some article in the popular press that summarizes this info). I tried to explain my reasoning on the editor's talk page, but this seems to have led to even more misunderstanding. Mainly I was asking for some patience and assistance given that this is part of an educational project (not trying to highlight the expertise of the editors involved): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SQGibbon#Educational_Game

It was then reverted back - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Educational_game&oldid=597699318&diff=prev -for policy reasons (but this should be discussed more publicly) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mozucat#Educational_Game

This wasn't vandalism or anything of the sort - it appears to be within wikipedia policy, and at worst was a needy edit, which should have been improved or helped with, as opposed to deleted, as per WP:RCP Everyone makes mistakes, but Mozucat (talk) 20:05, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

There was no accusation of vandalism, only of the potential for problems using primary sources. You stated "The student provided a summary of existing research," which is exactly the kind of thing we don't want to happen and is one of the reasons for WP:PRIMARY: "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge." You said so yourself that the original editor provided the summary as opposed to summarizing a summary from a secondary source. This is an example of original research.

"it appears to be within wikipedia policy" -- if it was a summary by the editor of primary sources then it was not.

"at worst was a needy edit" -- I don't know what a "needy edit" is, sorry.

"which should have been improved or helped with, as opposed to deleted, as per WP:RCP: -- Ah, "needy edit". The problem, as you stated on my talk page, is that you could not find a reliable secondary source that summarized the primary source that your student used. If you have not been able to find such a source then how am I supposed to fix it? Believe me, if it had been a case of an improperly formatted citation then I would have fixed it, but an editor providing their own interpretation of a primary source cannot be fixed without finding a secondary source to replace it which apparently is going to be difficult to do in this case. Reverting the edit was the appropriate response given that the problem cannot be fixed in the immediate future.

"Everyone makes mistakes" -- Of course. And hopefully we learn from them. And in this case no warning templates were placed on anyone's pages and no one was blocked. A mistake was made and I've now spent a good bit of time going into detail why I think the initial edit was in violation of existing Wikipedia policy.

"Wikipedia needs to be a more welcoming place." -- Sure. Had the original editor contacted me I would have walked them through all the issues very carefully with all the appropriate links and tried my best to help them understand the problem and how to go about fixing it. They didn't. And yes, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit but this does not mean anyone can edit it in any manner they please. We have a set of policies and guidelines in place that editors are expected to follow. It can be a daunting task to learn all the appropriate policies and guidelines relevant to your desired editing tasks, I get this and this leads to innocent violations of policy and guidelines which I still believe is what happened here. So now that I've laid out the problem with the original edit as I see it, either show where I've misunderstood the original edit (i.e., it's not a primary source and/or the editor did not provide their own summary of a primary source) or fix it. The material does not need to be in the article in violation of policy with the hopes that someone someday will fix it. If there's a problem and we recognize it now then we fix it or delete it. You can create a page in your user space that has all this same information and work on it from there and once it meets Wikipedia policy then you can move it over. In the meantime it just does not belong in the main article. SQGibbon (talk) 21:10, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Certainly there is no guideline against the use of primary sources in Wikipedia, only that such primary sources should be used in the light and context of established secondary sources. The only problem is with using primary sources unalloyed by wider scholarship, which would constitute WP:OR. I think that with a bit more use of secondary sources to provide appropriate context, we can make more use of the primary sources discussed to provide examples of the larger trends discussed in the secondary literature.--Pharos (talk) 23:11, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Game-based learning: Possible Plagiarism

The section titled "Game-based learning" has serious issues. Firstly, no references are given. It would be great if the contributor reveals the source for the content. The 2 sentences are exactly similar to the introductory lines on the page http://edtechreview.in/dictionary/298-what-is-game-based-learning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by UpperDeccan (talk • contribs) 07:22, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Moved Neurological Context to Here

I removed this section (below) and am placing it here. The section is titled "Neurological Context" but it is about game design. It quotes and references Thiagi, a non-notablegame website. The reference doesn't have anything to do with the quote. CerealKillerYum (talk) 07:27, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Neurological context

Thiagi states that games have five major characteristics: conflict, control, closure, contrivance, and competency. Games encourage active learning, interaction between multiple people, encourages teamwork, and also provide a free environment that allows for skill enhancement. Games based learning provides versatility for more than one learning style, and also can affect cognitive and psychomotor skills. While learning through games can be very effective, they can become a distraction, causing them to become too focused on the game and not on learning.

"…It cannot be denied that a great deal of learning does happen in games. Computer games that are considered “good”(i.e. popular and highly rated) already provide information in various formats, although the preference in most games is for information to be visually presented. By providing information in multiple formats (visual, textual, auditory, etc.), players cannot only choose a style that matches their own preference, but they can also practice their skills in others, and sometimes they do this even without realizing it.

"By design, good games support the approaches of concrete learners through a myriad of feedback mechanisms: visual, auditory, textual, progress charts, etc. while abstract learners can ignore whichever feedback mechanisms they choose – often by simply switching them off. Abstract learners can develop theories and test them out within games in ways not feasible in real life. The “reset” button remains available to both whenever they get into trouble.

References

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