Wii Go to School: Academic Uses for the Popular Console

The latest issue of Edutopia has an article by Laila Weir on Wii-learning: teachers finding academic uses for the Wii in their classrooms. Rather than using a game designed purely for educational purposes, these teachers are adapting existing games for the classroom.

Here’s a thought: Why not take a tech platform that kids are already nuts about and put it to use? That was the thought at Cumberland Elementary School, in West Lafayette, Indiana, where first-grade teacher David Brantley used a parent donation to buy three Wii consoles. Brantley integrated some of the Wii’s games and online channels into lessons on weather and geography. The result: “A great virtual map and globe activity,” he says.

Justifying its use by citing research showing benefits to learning in multiple modalities, the teachers often use the Wii for games with math, language, and logic exercises.

- Sports games provide opportunities for score keeping and math

- Bowling in particular provides several opportunities for number crunching

- Wii’s Big Brain Academy helps with reasoning and logic, but flashes loser and winner signs which may hurt self esteem; teachers combat this by prepping students on being gracious winners and losers

- Using the Wii has helped motivate “reluctant” students

My take: teachers have been adapting technology for classroom use since time immemorial, and this is just the latest example. It’s heartening to see a positive attitude toward gaming in the classroom. I suspect the family-friendly and easy-to-engage approach the Wii has taken helps ease it into the classroom over more “serious” consoles like the Playstation 3 and Xbox. Who can deny the Wii a role in the classroom when it’s being used in the gym and in nursing homes?

References:
Weir, L. (2008, June). Wii love learning: Using gaming technology to engage students. Edutopia. [Online]. Available: http://www.edutopia.org/ikid-wii-gaming-technology-classroom