Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills

eSchool News just put up an article that covers the CoSN webinar from last week:

Gaming helps students hone 21^st-century skills

This is a good article that touches on the high points of the webinar. There was a good mix of speakers addressing this issue last week. eSchool got in some of the better quotes from the webinar. I especially liked Ntiedo Etuk’s (CEO Tabula Digita) quote:

“Video games are among some of the most efficient and best learning tools I’ve seen out there,” said Etuk. “I say that because you could take [students or children] and put them in front of a video game, and they won’t know anything about their character, the rules of the world they’re about to enter, or the problems they’ll have to solve. But despite all of that, video game creators have somehow created such a compelling experience that, not only will these students go back and fail 100 or 1,000 times before they finally succeed, but they will spend money to get gaming guides, go to web sites, and ask friends.”

“If you had a system that could compel a student or child to do so much to make it work, but instead it was teaching them about algebra or science or calculus, I think that educators would–and should–fall all over themselves to understand as much as possible about why that works and how that happens,”

Jump to the link to read the full three page article.