Gaming in Education

For this quest we watched a couple different videos about gaming and how it can benefit education. I agree with the facts that it is self motivating and has instant gratification when you automatically receive feedback and a score at the end. I couldn't tell you how many times that I have played games over and over again to get a better score because I know that I can do better. Gaming in education is something that I myself have never really messed with. I have played games here and there throughout my schooling but it is never something I have interacted with. One point that Jane McGonigal made in her  TED TALK on how gaming can make a better world, was that students who have social problems or may be uncomfortable when put in certain social situations achieve great things in the game world because its a different reality in a way they can build themselves into someone they can't make themselves in the real world. I have never been much of a gammer by any means the extent of my gaming was Crash Bandicoot on PlayStation 1 after school with my cousin, so I can't speak much for gaming or gammers in that since but I don't mind gaming. I think that there are certain people that will benefit in a classroom more than others, and those students that like video games and are interested by that would be the people that I would target this type of learning towards. Knowing your students is important and while some students may like MindCraft and such some others may not be interested at all.
I played some of the games listed on our quest and found that the Geography games are probably my favorite. Although I did terrible and found out that I really don't know my geography, those games were the ones that I was drawn too. First I played Scribble States! which was pretty fun.

 You have the option of doing 10, 20 or 50 questions and the option to get tested on state names, state capitols or even state nicknames. I picked 10 questions wit state names because that would be the easiest right ? Well, I was wrong, I only scored like a 65% !



The next geography game that I played was ABCya! Capital Toss in this game you have the option to be tested on states or countries. Once again I chose states and still did terrible .  This game is set up lie a carnival game the capitols scroll across the screen and the state or country is at the bottom. you aim and click on the correct answer or in 9 out of 10 of my throws the wrong one and it throws the baseball to hit it and knock it over. 
There are so many free games out there for education that will teach you a lot of things in elementary school, I remember playing on FunBrain ALL the time! I loved it and with that website and some others that I have found it will give the students a code to come back later and not have to start over, which I think it really awesome. Gaming makes learning fun and I could definitely see myself using it in my classroom to work on all kinds of things for many different subjects.