BETTER THAN MARIO KART: Do schools really care about bringing games into instruction—or is it only a few? According to ThinkZone, it’s about 50-50. After acquiring a USDOE grant, the gaming startup attempted to shed light on this question by putting the money towards a game survey of 800 K-12 teachers and 350 administrators. Approximately half of all administrators (55%) and teachers (53%) believe that games can be “used to teach complex and challenging ideas and topics,” and a total of 51% of teachers use games in the classroom either daily or weekly.
So what does this mean for the future of games? Several survey questions asked what users were looking for from gaming platforms. Amongst the requests:
- Better dashboards (from both teachers and administrators)
- Customizable reports (from administrators)
- Game is built on research and data principles (from both teachers and administrators)
- Game is “bundled with other materials and connected with teaching goals” (from both teachers and administrators)
