Shafaque Riaz: Moving learning games forward
by Shafaque Riaz Expert Educator Columnist, UAE Due to the stretched gap between my posts, I missed the connectivity with my readers, but I am happy to be back and sharing some of my experiences. As I mentioned in my earlier post, this time my focus is to talk over hurdles we as educators face by introducing games in mainstream lessons as a medium of instruction and how can we overcome them to use games effectively for learning. Primarily we should have clarity that it is neither the computer game nor the technology that promotes learning, but the play surrounding it. The learning occurs in a non-linear unstructured way when technology or video games/ simulated environment are used as teaching tools, and it is often the environment that fosters knowledge building and understanding. “The creative play is the foundation of early abstract thinking” (Vygotsky, 1986) The changing role of the teacher in this new setting I witnessed that when students gets the feeling of being in-charge of themselves, over their feeling, thinking, and learning behaviours, …