Dr. Paul Howard-Jones told attendees at the Learning Without Frontiers Conference in London last week that video gaming engages kids because gaming stimulates the reward system in the brain to produce dopamine, “which helps orient our attention and enhances the making of connections between neurons, the physical basis for learning,” the New York Times reported.
Howard-Jones, a neuroscientist at the University of Bristol (UK), said that according to research, chance or a game element in a reward system with no guarantee of reward increases the dopamine production. Therefore, games can be a powerful tool for teachers to use in their classrooms. “We call it TWIG—teaching with immersive gaming.”
Psychologist Simone Kuhn of Ghent University (Belgium) and his colleagues conducted a study of 154 14-year-old girls and boys in Berlin, and divided them into groups of frequent gamers and infrequent gamers to study the effects of video gaming on their brains. Their findings, reported in the journal Transitional Psychology, concluded that the frequent gamers had more gray matter in the rewards center of the brain. They suggested that gaming may be correlated to brain changes like addictions are. (Reported by the Los Angeles Times.)
In a Q&A on youramazingbrain.org Web site, Howard-Jones said his focus is applying brain science to improve teaching and learning. “We are learning so much about the brain now, it just seems crazy that we are not using more of this knowledge to improve education.”
So, rather than fight cell phones in the classrooms, teachers should incorporate them into their lesson delivery, he asserts.
Quest to Learn is the NYC school that is based on game theory (see ISM Monthly Update for Division Heads, 21st Century Learning: Can the Classroom Be a Game Space?) The school does not incorporate commercial videogaming into its curriculum, but rather “uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly immersive, game-like experiences.”
In short, Quest To Learn defines itself as “a school for digital kids.” One of the core principles is “Learning for design and innovation,” which ties to Howard-Jones asserting that chance and no guaranteed reward keeps kids engaged. They will work at it, accepting failure, until they ultimately “beat” the challenge. Quest 2 Learn notes that “our curriculum is design led and inquiry-based … students are given time, space, and purpose to tinker with systems. Students tinker and theorize as a core method of discovery.”
Learn more about the Learning Without Frontiers Conference.
Additional resources of interest
Dr. Paul Howard-Jones, Toward a Science of Learning Games
Teaching Today Web site, Cellphones in the Classroom
ISM Private School News, Vol. 10 No. 2 Educating Kids About Social Media—21st Century Technology in the Classroom
Additional articles of interest for Consortium Gold members
Ideas & Perspectives Vol. 35 No. 3 The 21st Century School: Curriculum and Technology
Ideas & Perspectives Vol. 35 No. 5 The 21st Century School: Students
