USA Today is my Sunday newspaper of choice. Not only because it is the only one delivered right to me, but because it does a great job at reporting smaller stories that The New York Times or other larger newspapers do not. Today while I was on the USA Today website, this article really caught my eye. I love video games, and when an opportunity arises for video games to be used in an educational setting I jump all over the opportunity.
These games strategically combine fun, fast-paced graphics with facts towards living a greener lifestyle. This synergistic effect is a prime example of incidental learning. Students are learning one concept while doing something else. Incidental learning is a great tool to use in the classroom, especially when the subject matter being presented is boring to the students. The incidental learning will distract them from the actual target objective, while still learning. The games in the article cost money, but educators can adapt this learning strategy into any material and formulate specialized games or tasks for specific topics. Using technology in this way is just another example of how using multimodal forms of educating in the classroom can bolster learning!
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