The Potential Of Video Games For The Educational Field

Numerous studies gather the fact that, used according to pedagogical criteria, videogames can bring interesting benefits to the educational world, which allow complementing (and sometimes even replacing) more “traditional” resources. From the practical point of view, we can choose a videogame that in its conception was not designed with a clear educational objective and adapt our didactic proposal to make use of it, or choose a video game specifically designed to be used as an educational tool, taking into account It counts the needs of its recipients and offers a complete didactic proposal (contents, didactic objectives, monitoring of students’ progress and even a didactic guide for its use in the classroom). Below we present a series of varied proposals and through which you can get an idea of ​​the potential of these tools for the educational field.

1. Minecraft: Minecraft is an example of video game that, in principle, was not intended to be used in education, but whose characteristics allow multiple uses. A group of programmers and educators have decided to create a version to be used in classrooms around the world. Along with this version, a lot of exercises and activities are also offered to take advantage of the full potential of this videogame.
2. Hakitzu: Perhaps it may be strange to include a fight videogame in an article about educational videogames, but Hakitzu proposes a robot fight tournament in which it will be necessary to learn to program in order to win. Through increasingly sophisticated scripts we will be able to proclaim ourselves champions of the tournament, an entertaining and motivating way to learn to program. At the moment, it is only available for iOS, although they promise an Android version in a short time.
3. Kokori Project: This videogame puts players at the controls of a small ship, a “nanobot” capable of entering a cell to study it, as well as identifying and solving problems that may be encountered. Biology in the first person divided into several short missions with different levels of complexity that allow to work with contents related to the area of ​​biology.
4. Dragon Box: This video game is designed to work with mathematical contents (algebra, more specifically) in a different way than we are used to. For this, in the first steps of the game the problems are represented by objects, and thus the player can start learning the basic rules. Little by little, the objects are replaced by variables and numbers so that, at the end of the game, we will be able to solve complex equations without much effort.
5. Cap Odyssey: A game developed by the French company KTM Advance for the French Ministry of Agriculture. Players discover the principles of the agricultural economy, the evolution of prices, how to improve production or face climatic risks, sustainability, etc. This videogame proposes us to enter the agricultural world and learn content related to a field that, unfortunately, has lost the interest of the youngest.