Topic 8 – Digital Games and Design

Casper Wang – 44637586 – 8/5/2020

As modern technology is constantly evolving, so is the direction of the digital world. Nowadays, modern schools are pushing more and more technology based learning as the Australian curriculum requires students to develop Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability as they also learn to use ICT effectively and appropriately to access, create and communicate information, develop problem solving and collaborative abilities in learning (Australian curriculum, 2020). Digital games and design can be created and interacted with in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality or just simply on computers.

Digital games and designs can introduce the sense of responsibilities, peer collaboration, as well as learning new skills. Research has shown that students involved in game learning curriculum based activities such as ‘Scratch’ have learnt to practice safe security with personal data, developed classroom collaboration in sharing ideas and media information and  developing new digital literacy skills (Costa, Tyner, Henriques & Sousa, 2017).

In my experience, games can be complicated and explicit designs or simple and user friendly, such as Scratch. Scratch is a block-based visual programming language and website mainly targeted at younger students (K-6). Scratch allows the users to create games and ideas using simplified coding blocks. Users can publish their finished designs freely online where other users can open and interact with, allowing people to explore different levels of creativity and ideas.

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However, I don’t see the usage of Scratch beyond primary education. In a pedagogical sense, Digital games and designs can promote learning and critical development of creativity and higher order thinking. However, this requires professional learning by teachers in understanding the ICT language and how the software works to prevent interference with pedagogical planning. Furthermore, students may become distracted by digital games and focus less attention on the tasks, which can detrimentally lead ineffective teaching and learning; where learning is primary and entertainment is mostly secondary (Plaisent, Tomiuk, Perez, Mokeddem & Bernard, 2019).

Nevertheless, research studies have shown that video games can yield experience on cognitive functions, including a positive correlation between task performance during probabilistic categorisation learning and positive effects on memory systems (Schenk, Lech & Suchan, 2017). Games in educational context can become unreplaceable assets in modern education, students can develop critical learning, higher order thinking skills/problem solving skills and most importantly, creative skills.

Reference

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). 2020.

Costa, C., Tyner, K., Henriques, S., & Sousa, C. (2017). Digital Game Creation for Media and Information Literacy Development in Children. European Conference on Games Based Learning, 112-121.

Plaisent, M., Tomiuk, D., Perez, L., Mokeddem, A., & Bernard, P. (2019). Serious Games for Learning with Digital Technologies. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lucila_Perez/publication/336882144_Serious_Games_for_Learning_with_Digital_Technologies/links/5db8c8fc4585151435d1698b/Serious-Games-for-Learning-with-Digital-Technologies.pdf

Schenk, S., Lech, R., & Suchan, B. (2017). Games people play: How video games improve probabilistic learning. Behavioural Brain Research, 335, 208-214.