Computer-games

=Game playing= //Games are thus the most ancient and time-honored vehicle for education. They are the original educational technology, the natural one, having received the seal of approval of natural selection. We don't see mother lions lecturing cubs at the chalkboard; we don't see senior lions writing their memoirs for posterity. In light of this, the question, "Can games have educational value?" becomes absurd. It is not games but schools that are the newfangled notion, the untested fad, the violator of tradition. Game-playing is a vital educational function for any creature capable of learning."// [|Crawford, The Art of Computer Game Design]

Van Eck paper Kirriemuir Nesta Becta

COTS (commercial off the shelf)

Edutainment

=Game making= Penning a cartoon is more than the technical aspects of writing, it includes elements of artwork, plot and story. Similarly, making a computer game is more than just writing a software program. The assembly draws upon many different subjects or disciplines. Whilst most games are programmed in C+, this should not imply that teaching about programming games should use the same software tool. With software tools such as GameMaker, students can integrate and build upon their graphical, audio, logical and mathematics skills, even within the span of a single lesson and without the horrors of debugging minor, unforgiving program code errors.

Programming computer games can engage a student with an environment that they can easily use to directly create, test, modify and evaluate their programming solutions. This may inspire some to continue with their studies to learn a higher order programming language. At the very least, they may better come to understand the commercial software and edutainment offerings that they consume.