The range of educational games is very wide and there are both benefits and drawbacks but it depends of what kind and person you are and how you learn. In school, games are usually very rare but why? Is learning from interaction and enjoyment bad for the student?
According to my opinions education through interaction is better for younger students because they have minor needs, it's easy making a game covering simple math problems, what's the answer of 1+1? and those games are mostly very interactive, the educational and interactive segments or separated to each other. Instead of learning, the student want to level up.
In contrast, the needs of a middle school students is much bigger than that of a first grader. A game isn't enough to cover all the topics and sometimes, listening to the teacher or reading a science book could kind of "painful" for the ninth grader to. Could you find a particle physics/radiation game on the internet? Could you?
Every student is different, some people might have a greater knowledge but other ones probably just have the minimum required by the teacher, some might do homework/assignments in time but others can't catch up and at the time you teacher assigns the class to play a game, there would always be pro's and con's. There are people playing a lot of games in the free time and perhaps they need a more complicated and a special kind but others who never spends theirs time just want it simple and engaging. Games are engaging but sometimes it also could "cross the limit" and the student don't use it as an educational purpose, it's hard to find a "perfect" educational game for a class because some just learn better without interaction and enjoyment. It depends of who you are. I've seen reports about this topic in different perspectives, some say it's better for education and other say it is worse, it just depends of the journalists. The main reason press people look at games as negative is because enjoyment and learning have usually been separated for a very long time and it slowly just become a habit of people, schools in China are very boring and I promise, you won't find it more fun and the same thing with swedish school in the sixties. However, only at the "modern" time swedish schools made the education more enjoyable for the student.
Sometimes, regular learning is to boring and I usually watch educational videos in Youtube. I strongly recommend the channel Crash course and they surely are very popular.
A lot of educational channels in Youtube differ from how we learn from school, just a specific topic could result in tons of other different subjects and they often cover more than your needs. Combined with interesting animations/pictures and a trace of humor, the boring subjects have transformed to your interests and it's much easier to remember all of those strange terms and scientific words. Another benefit is that you could use some of that knowledge in school and probably impress you teacher.
But, notice. You can't make the youtube videos a "base" for education, it's just a way to deepen you studies and what the teacher says is still more important.
Crash course, an educational youtube channel, there are videos from biology to english literature.
Interest is one of the most significant matter in studying, some interaction is ok but not to much, if your focus is passing the level, don't play that game while studying but no interest on a subject isn't worse than a very interactive game, you won't learn anything.
Seterra, a challenging geography game/program with 70 different exercises and Glosor.eu, some kind of vocabulary testing game/program or two exceptions (there are more), you could do the exercises online or download it.
They are both very useful to the student and the interaction is sufficient enough to maintain a good experience while still increasing your skills and knowledge playing it and at least, those "games" are very recommended by our teachers and I've realized it. If you are going to have a geography test, Seterra is perfect for studying for it. In our foreign language studies, we have a vocabulary test every week. Using Glosor.eu, you will remember all of those words in less than 15 minutes.
Those are the benefits of interaction and if you have the adequate amount of it, it's going to be handy but to much could result on prosy disadvantages.
Every people differ and the educating is individual, in this text I just wrote my opinions and this is how I refer gaming in education, not other people, the manner every people study distinct to each other.
In school and learning I associate games as the opposite but the main subject of education is just to enjoy it, make it fun and useful for the coming future! School isn't that bad, huh?
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