Article 3 - Unit 3

Van Eck, Richard. (2006). Digital Game-Based Learning. EDUCAUSE Review, March/April.
Summary:
The above article on DGBT (Digital Game-Based Learning) tried to give a complete summary on the history and realistic implementation of DGBT into education. Van Eck covers the effectiveness of games in furthering the learning process, if they are done correctly, and dives into the benefits of games for students. To further this point, the author dives into the effects that digital games have on the cognitive level, and how playing these games can help students learn and create new ways of thinking to accommodate new problems. Successful implementation is also covered in the article in great detail, with Van Eck describing the problems that someone trying to implement DGBT will encounter (such as resistance to DGBT via opposite beliefs and the infrastructural support needed for the games), and the difficulties of choosing a proper game to help reach certain educational goals. Finally, the most important aspect of DGBT that Van Eck mentions is aligning the game with the course content, which he further explores and develops.


Response:
While I am in complete agreement with the article, I wished that the author could have shown more concrete and realistic examples of how DGBT has actually been implemented already. While he does mention some ways of implementation, and that those ways have already been done, he did not go into any detail of how the teacher actually did so. Beyond that, I found the article to go into great detail of the history of DGBT, how thoughts about it have changed over time, and how to implement it into curriculum for many classes. I may be a bit biased, however, as I strongly believe (as do my parents) that playing video games as a young child helped me not only to learn how to read more complex text than we were learning in school, but also furthered my interest in reading books, as I had learned to appreciate reading stories.