How Can Video Games Progress Learning?: A Look at Uses of Video Games in Connection with Literature

How many high school students play video games? Even if they don’t play video games, how many students would be interested if a teacher or librarian brought video games into school? For the most part, even the people who don’t really play video games in their spare time are going to at least be curious if a teacher brings video games into the school just because it is so rarely done, and catching students’ interest is half the battle in learning.

First, I want to discuss why students can benefit from the use of video games:

1. One of the greatest uses of video games in the classroom is to get your students interested, to revitalize students. All teachers and librarians have those little slums where the students are getting bored with school in general as they are beginning to feel like every class is the same. Bringing video games into the classroom may just shake things up enough to draw the students back in.
2. Also, bringing in video games helps you reach out to a larger variety of students. Picture that shy kid in the back of the room who very rarely participates in class. You’ve brought in movies, Internet sites, and music, but you are still unable to draw him out. Perhaps, his passion is with video games, and by bringing them into the classroom, you are going to give him the courage and the interest level to do some meaningful participation in class. This is the reason I think teachers and librarians need to bring in as many different types of media as they can that are relevant to their subject area. The more they vary their media the more likely they are to hit upon the interests of all the students.
3. Finally, video games fit really went in a study of literature as attested by the standards. Throughout the Illinois standards, there are references to both media and to the need for students to read a variety of texts. If librarians and teachers have students practice the same kinds of literary skills they use in literature with video games, they will also be fulfilling the state standards.

While the benefits of using video games may be fairly obvious once pointed out, figuring out how to use them in schools can be a little more difficult to figure out. Bringing in video games for no reason is not effective teaching. The following are some ways to bring video games into the school:

1. Many high school teachers in both journalism classes and English classes assign students to write reviews of movies. The instructor can broaden this idea. Let the students write about movies, music, or, yes, even video games. If the students write about the thing they are most passionate about, they are going to do a better job on the assignment.
2. Sometimes, with struggling readers especially, teachers will bring in those interactive texts where you choose your own ending. For example, you’ll get to a certain point where a character has two options, and you choose which the character does. If you want the character to do option A, you turn to page 10, but if you want the character to choose Option B, you turn to page 13. This format can really help uninterested readers get involved in texts. Well, believe it or not, a very similar storyline is used in most RPG video games or role-playing video games. You, as the main character, are given an option, and you make the character’s decision to advance the story. If you’re doing a unit on interactive texts, RPG video games would fit perfectly, and you could apply the same analysis to the games as you do to the texts.
3. Librarians and English teachers also study texts that involve monsters such as Frankenstein and Beowulf. If you are studying how different monsters are portrayed, video games provide a unique perspective for an activity like this one. You could bring in a few different video games and look at the different monsters in them. Zelda has Ganandorf. Final Fantasy VII has Sephiroth. Mario Bros. has Bowser.
4. If you are doing a unit on World War II and the Holocaust, Call of Duty lets players act as participants in this war. This gives you the chance to let students reenact some of the fighting that took place during this time, so they get a better understanding of the period.
5. If you are doing a unit of violence, there are several video games that would be useful. Halo is a very popular first-person shooter that would give students a different perspective on violence then perhaps they would get from only reading books alone. By using the video game in class, students could analyze the way violence works to further the game and what this says about our culture.
6. Many English teachers and librarians form writing clubs that do creative writing. Video games can be a great way to introduce creative writing skills. Using the video games The Sims, students can work together to get those creative juices flowing. The group will write a story together. They get to design the characters of the story together using the game. Each student takes a turn telling what is happening in the story (in a sentence or two) as another student controls the characters to enact the story for everyone. The activity can be done in reverse, too. One person can control the characters as the students take turns using descriptive adjectives to describe what is happening on screen.

When you study interactive texts like video games, students get to relate to them on very deep level. You just have to figure out a way to incorporate them into the units you’re covering!