Ci 2312 week 10 Games and Education
This week’s topic is very exciting for me because gaming is a very important part of my life. Whenever I feel tired or sad, video games always help me adjust my mind and escape from my existing life. In the beginning, I liked to play single-player games alone because it allowed me to enjoy the atmosphere of the game better. But during this period of quarantine, I started to play online games more often. Online games helped me interact with more people as I did before the quarantine period and ensured that I didn’t feel lonely. At first, I liked to play some competitive or MOBA-type games, but I found that these games did not make me feel happy. In these types of games, many players don’t always stay calm. For example, they may lose their temper with each other or use bad words to insult each other. This led to the game no longer being a way for me to adjust my feeling but instead becoming a source of stress. So I was introduced to Final Fantasy XIV by a friend. Final Fantasy XIV is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and the goal is not to attack each other to win but to cooperate to challenge some of the monsters in the game. This requires players to be good at communication and be able to help each other. The environment in this game is also very good because players have to go through an extended plot and spend a lot of time adapting to the game’s operation mechanics, so each player who perseveres can understand newcomers’ frustrations. In the process, I met many players who helped me by giving me gifts and carrying me through challenging levels. In this group, I felt the inclusion and warmth.
Through this game, I realized that due to the variety of online game modes, the ethos and player mentality of a game is different. Teens are likely to be influenced by the player base when they are exposed to different types of games. An excellent online environment can help foster responsibility and empathy in teens and help them be more tolerant of other communities in real life. However, those poor online environments can make teens irritable and make it difficult to establish good communication with others. I believe that a game needs to strictly regulate its chat system to avoid allowing players to use trashy words. Such an approach can help reduce a certain amount of conflict and the imitation of these bad habits.
However, I still believe that games are a way to help students learn. In education, teachers can use games to boost students’ motivation to learn. For example, I am currently teaching a first-grader in a practicum, and we use a website called WordWall every week to learn grammar. On this site, we can simply make the knowledge into some fun games. My student likes this way of learning because he finds it very relaxing to learn words through games. This proves that games can be totally integrated into the classroom, but the teacher has to learn to choose the games and make sure the students are not distracted by them.
