Educsite

Computer games are indisputably motivational by nature, however, they haven't truly infiltrated education to any extent. Although games are unlikely to be seen as the be all and end all of education in the near future I do see some very important applications for computer games within education that could be developed right now. Firstly, there are many off the shelf games that can be used as catalysts for social debate and social impact, which is always a difficult aspect of education to approach in schools and at home (e.g. use of 'Spore' to stimulate discussion about belief systems etc see http://www.gamesforchange.org/main/newentry/learning_from_spore1/) . Games for change(http://www.gamesforchange.org/) is an excellent organisation set up for this purpose if you wish to delve further.

Another important use for games may well be the expansion of our cognitive capacity through mind games. Recent research indicates that with training we can increase our working memory capacity which in turn can increase our fluid intelligence (the part of our IQ that is responsible for problem solving etc). The type of training used for this is fairly repetitive and boring and requires mental work, however by incorporating such training into computer games for kids then IQs and Working Memory can be expanded to cope with more traditional school work and may even be useful for helping diaffected kids. Thanks to Derek Wenmoth's blog (http://blog.core-ed.net/derek/) I recently read the 2020 Forecast (http://www.futureofed.org/) which talks about increasing ones self through such brain training and gives some excellent links to other articles etc.

Design-Based Research Collective. (2003). Design-based research: An emerging paradigm for educational inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5-8.

An excellent paper describing 'Design Based Research Methods' which is an approach to studying learning intervention that takes a holistic view of learning, thus taking the context and the learning intervention (program) into account. The paper describes 5 central characteristics of 'Design Based Research Methods':

1. The aim of the research must be to design/construct an effective learning environment as well as to develop a theory of learning.
2. The research should happen through a design/ redesign cycle.
3. The research should lead to useful theories about the implication of the work.
4. The research must be relevant to authentic settings and give information about success, failure and any more subtle interactions that enhance or flaw the design.
5. The development of the research accounts need to use methods that allow documentation that connect how it is done to the practicality of doing it.

Major problems for research in Education are the fact that we often lack either informative theories that relate them to actual practice or that the research itself is not scientific/empirical or fundamentally flawed. The Design Based Research Approach attempts to deal with these problems and attempts to move education forward by documenting effective innovative techniques and why they work.