Gaming and the Brain?

An interesting article on Yahoo caught my attention this morning as I have been investigating more about what good educational gaming means lately. Unfortunately, good educational gaming doesn't come neatly wrapped up in a tidy box that fits our school system well. My interview of Sylvia Martinez was very enlightening and hammered home that very point. While I have watched her speak before, I began to fall into the trap of asking wrong the questions when looking at educational games on the ITouch and IPhone. How can we grade out educational games properly for these devices when they don't always seem to fit neatly into a curricular area?

And according to some recent studies, it turns out that playing video games not only stimulates those synapses, but might actually make you a sharper thinker after all. - Yahoo

Information and studies like this is interesting but it most likely will never make an impact on our school systems as they are configured today. Our school systems are founded on "curricular" areas and not solely on stimulating the brain. If educational games do not fit our system, does that mean we shouldn't use them? If we should use them, how can we overcome this obstacle?

Yahoo finally says, "Plus, you know, it's just a better game. And it doesn't take a big brain to figure that out."

The educational game has to be very "fun" or it just won't make an impact on the student. Sylvia Martinez talked a lot about this aspect and I think we all need to listen closely.

Crossposted at http://www.smeech.net