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Grand Theft Learning Object
Bryan Alexander, Director of Research at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) writes about Games for Education: 2008 in the July/August 2008 issue of Educause Review. Alexander discusses computer games as learning objects “from which both students and educational staff can learn”.
“Games can be learning objects. This assertion summons up two strands of thought concerning computer-mediated teaching and learning. First, many of the goals for the learning objects movement can be transferred to games: digital objects from which learners can learn and that can be repeated. Second, we now have two decades of practical experience in using and thinking about digital objects in teaching, even if we have not always applied learning objects as a term to describe them: CD-ROMs, podcasts, videos, assigned web pages, e-reserves, files on USB drives, GIF or Java applets. If we emphasize the replayability of learning objects, the idea of computer games as items to learn from is not a new thought at all.2″
