GAMELAB

MY REFLECTION ON PAUL ANDERSON`S TED TALK ON VIDEO GAMES

Nowadays is really hard to include games in the classroom. I am an IB teacher for Literature and Theory of Knowledge, and we have a huge syllabus to cover in two years, and it seems impossible to include games in the classroom. I am not saying they are bad, I actually love and enjoy playing games, but with books, and making students read a book it seems a difficult task to accomplish through games.
I do believe the grade is of uttmost importance to the kids and parents nowadays, and since the educational system requires a grade, that is an issue that is not going to change. The educational systems are doomed to fail since everything revolves around a simple grade. This can be a harmful issue for students`self esteem. We need to ,of course,include gaming in the clases, but some other policies need to change like including  an specific criteria on games, to motivate students and kids to use and play them.
 Everybody enjoys games, even us, who are currently going through our masters degree. We need to maje changes in some policies like giving less teaching hours to the teachers, so we can have more time to plan and créate games. The same goes to the criterion, we now have a grade for individul and group works, homework and quizzes, but what about a gaming criteria??

Just a thought...