Aptitude, intelligence, and application of theoretical studies are often assessed by school through the means of examinations. While written examinations are a common, there also exercises in application such as science experiments, and other similar projects that help educators get a better grasp of how well students understand the lessons and if they have learned how to apply it in real life.
It works, so far, but most of these methods are dated and though many schools have incorporated the use of technology in teaching, they have not yet used it fully in assessing student capabilities.
According to Professor James Gee, video games are not only a great way to teach kids, but to also assess their performance as well.
Video games are more than just hobbies and a form of entertainment; they also provide a very immersive learning experience for users. Take MMORPGs for example. The typical MMORPG will have you creating a new character, going through a quick tutorial process about game control and basic rules of the game before it lands you in a virtual world where you must learn about things on your own as you go.
There are plenty of things to learn in the online gaming world, each game has its own distinct community, game play, story line and even in-game economics. Its social studies, science, literature, history, maths and more; oddly enough, after two months of playing a game daily, a student knows more of the game world that what is learned at school for the same period of time. Even better is that monitoring game progress is easy, allowing anyone to be able to create a real time assessment of aptitude without the limits of scheduled examinations. The best part is that kids generally love playing games.
Read more about using video games for educational purposes at the Telegraph UK.
Tags: video-games