Video, Video Games, and Virtual Reality

Video games, virtual reality, and other online spaces are not only beneficial for entertainment, but if used in the right way, can be extremely beneficial for educational purposes as well. Implementing this into the classroom can open new accessibility options, improve student engagement, and amplify student voices.

To begin, an online space that I was/am really unfamiliar with is Book-Tok. I really only see Tik Tok as an entertainment platform, which could be caused by my toxic sludge FYP, but I was extremely hesitant when beginning to read. In the class reading, Book Tok 101, I was really surprised to see an educator named Trevor including TikTok within his classroom since 2018. Not only has he seen TikTok allow students to actively engage in variations of creative writing, visual storytelling, and culture sharing, but it also built numerous skills such as communication, digital, social, and emotional (Jerasa and Boffone 224). All of these skills are beneficial especially for students. With our generation of educators being extremely tech savvy, integrating/teaching through something everyone in the classroom is familiar with (TikTok) could be beneficial for both students and teachers in MANY ways.

To continue, another new, evolving way of educating is through video games! I personally love video games and have been playing them for over half of my lifetime. The reading Video Games in the Secondary English Language Arts Classroom, by Brady Nash and Randi Brady, provides amazing findings regarding video game implementation into the classroom. The authors bring up multiple avenues in which games can be used. In the text, the authors state, "In these studies, video games were treated as multimodal texts through which elements such as narrative, character, and theme could be examined" (Nash and Brady 963) and further saying, "...the potential for games to not only play a similar role in analysis to that of more traditional texts such as novels and poems but also to inspire new conversations about the nature of storytelling and meaning-making" (Nash and Brady 963). Nash and Brady are introducing the idea that video games are now becoming equally as important as novels and other traditional texts and are also sparking NEW conversations about storytelling and meaning-making that other pieces (probably) couldn't provide. These two authors also introduce using the game Minecraft to build and recreate important scenes from their novels. This idea is absolutely GENIUS in my opinion. I play Minecraft quite frequently and there is no end to the creativity that it can bring. Mixing a sandbox building game with the imagination of novel reading is a perfect way to maintain old-school literature while introducing something new. If I was able to build scenes out in the game in my old literature classes, then I would have absolutely enjoyed learning more. 

I love video games (as I have stated before) so I wanted to include a video by WatchMojo talking about some of the best story modes in gaming. Some on this list are God of War, the Last of Us, and many more.

Furthermore, virtual reality is a rising mode of gaming, and even literacy as we've seen from the readings in class. Clarice Moran and Maya Woodall, in their article "It Was Like I Was There": Inspiring Engagement Through Virtual Reality, highlight the positives of VR usage in the classroom. In all of the instances within the reading, all of the students were overjoyed to be "placed into the novel" with this technology. Not only did it spike their interest in the book/material, but they also said, "They reported that VR helped clarify the setting and that the characters felt more human and more 'real'" (Moran and Woodall 93). It's amazing to see that virtual reality not only is an educational medium tied to student interest, but it can also better transfer the setting, characters, and meanings into a more understandable way for students. Although this is great, there are negatives that the article, as well as us in class, discussed about VR. In the article students mentioned the risk of their phones falling and breaking, some students not having the technology like their peers, and intense motion sickness resulting in frequent breaks. I personally side with the negatives believing that although it is innovative it might not be the best for a learning setting.

In conclusion, there are many emerging ways that technology can be implemented into education. As can be seen with this unit, video games, VR, AR, and other methods of video that have so many benefits for students learning and skills. With such benefits though, there are also negatives that can't be ignored which brings the question: Which methods should and should not be used to educate students?