May 2013 - The National Foundation for Education Rsearch (nfer) and Futurelab have just published a report titled Game-based learning: latest evidence and future directions (PDF) which provides some useful perspectives on the types of educational values that can be attached to gaming.
The report first considers how the notion of game-based learning is defined, with a review of the literature and then offering some thoughts for moving forward. It then addresses the impct and potential impact of game-based learning on education, before considering specifically the implications for future reserach and implications for teachers and schools.
“WeChat is just the latest platform that intermediates interactions between teachers, parents, students,” says Danah Boyd, a Microsoft researcher who studies social media and the author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. “No intervention around the technology will make any difference if the pressure-cooker culture doesn’t change.”