Educational games can teach us stuff

What would make a game educational? If you learn something or if you become better at a task you are already familiar with. So how are we going to determine that by playing these so called educational games we have in fact learned something, or became better at a task? Well, we can test it ourselves or look at other literature.

I have started to dive into looking at other literature.
There is not a whole lot of research done on this topic, but so far, to my surprise, all the studies I have looked at have concluded a positive correlation between playing educational games and actually learning something. A study done by Marina Papastergiou compared two test groups, one group used a gaming approach for learning computer memory concepts and the other group used a website with the instructional material and quizzes to follow. The result of the study concluded "the gaming approach was both more effective in promoting students’ knowledge of computer memory concepts and more motivational for students than the non-gaming approach." Check out the article if you want to learn more about the study. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1465357

Of course not every game that claims to be educational is going to provide us with the same rave reviews as the above fore mentioned. The above result is reassuring however that educational computer games can provide a means to learning stuff.

I want to start off my journey with a look through the ages of what types of educational games are out there. I will start with the pre-school age, working my way through the middle years and teens ending in a look at adult focused educational games. If you have any favourites that you would like me to explore, please send me the link. I intend to check back in and post my findings in a couple days.