The U.S. Department of Education says future of education includes video games in classrooms

With Connexus v3 We have a chance to reinvent education in a way that makes it more relevant to today's student.

"If you look at the life of a student ... a lot of students play on average about 10,000 hours of video games by the time they are graduating high school. That is almost the same amount they are spending in schools, You can imagine a lot of the time which of the two activities they might feel more engaged in..." ERIK MARTIN, THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION'S GAMES FOR LEARNING LEAD.

What can we ADD to OUR product to not only DIFFERENTIATE us from our competitors, but INCREASE student INTEREST as well as PERFORMANCE, but also REVENUE?

Unlike traditional subjects like Math, Science, and History, structured learning environments and resources aren't available for most video games (at least not yet). There aren't any Street Fighter classes to take, no Halo professors holding office hours. With the proper implementation we can encourage kids to WANT to get better at Math, Science and History.

The Proof

"As a teacher, I have never been a fan of video games. Prodigy changed my mind in a hurry. My students talked non-stop about Math, their mental math abilities skyrocketed and their confidence when completing problem solving questions was boosted. Bring on the standardized testing; we're ready for a battle.”

Jeffory Hargrove, Grade 3 Teacher, KPRDSB

Results of Students using the Prodigy Platform:

Schools that were active on Prodigy in the 2013-2014 school year saw large improvements in grade 3 EQAO scores compared to the previous year. Schools with at least one active grade 3 classroom improved by 3.0%, versus a 0.1% improvement for inactive schools. Schools where over 85% of grade 3 students were active on Prodigy saw an 11.6% improvement on EQAO scores compared to the previous year, which was 11.5% higher than inactive schools! The results suggest that along with classroom instruction and proper implementation, Prodigy’s game-based approach to learning can have a positive impact on standardized test scores. Third graders played for just 10 minutes per day, 3 days a week, for 4 weeks. The comparison group’s class received the same materials and the same instruction, but didn’t play the game. The result of playing was a staggering 20.5% improvement after just 2 hours of self-guided play.

"I have always felt in public education that kids' basic skills are slowing them down to understand more complex content," she says. "They're spending too much time trying to remember what nine times six is, but their time should be spent on the more complex math."

Students at Mario Umana Academy are assigned First in Math games as a homework assignment. That way, as they build on basic skills at home, they're able to move on to more advanced math in the classroom - and the results show. According to Montes McNeil, the school's math scores on state tests have gone up substantially, by about 20 to 22 composite performance index (CPI) points. And each year, the scores have gone up on state metrics by five to seven points.

Findings from researchers at NYU and the City University of New York in a study of middle-schoolers.

While playing a math video game either competitively or collaboratively with another player—as compared to playing alone—students adopted a mastery mindset that is highly conducive to learning. Moreover, students’ interest and enjoyment in playing the math video game increased when they played with another student. Their findings, which appear in the Journal of Educational Psychology, point to new ways in which computer, console, or mobile educational games may yield learning benefits

There was a 50% increase in correct answers to standardized tests by students who learned by playing an educational game, since the were exposed to information repeatedly in their attempt to increase score.

Videogames can improve early literacy in 4 and 5 year olds, especially letter recognition and story comprehension.

Kids that played Tetris for 30 minutes a day for three months had a thicker brain cortex than those who didn't.

Action games sharpen vision and help cure Amblyopia aka "Lazy Eye." Some games can do in 1 hour what an eye patch does in 400.

Surgeons that gamed were 27% faster at procedures and made 37% fewer errors compared to those that didn't.

In this study, players played platformers such as Super Mario Brothers for at least 30 minutes a day for 2 months. They showed “significant gray matter (GM) increase in right hippocampal formation (HC), right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and bilateral cerebellum.” These are the areas of the brain “crucial for spatial navigation, strategic planning, working memory and motor performance.”

But, what can a game provide that normal lessons can't?

• Student Engagement: Engagement is known to be a significant factor in learning. A well-designed video game creates a deep level of engagement rarely generated in a typical classroom.
• Mindset: Players in a game quickly learn to adopt an iterative approach involving exploratory trial-and-error, reflection on failure, and subsequent adaptation. This results in a positive, “can do” attitude that Stanford researcher Carol Dweck demonstrated has an enormous effect on performance.
• Focused Design: A well designed video game will lead to rapid, deep acquisition of whatever skills are intrinsically required to succeed in the game. A key word in that sentence is intrinsic. In order for a good video game to yield significant learning of X, the game has to be built tightly around X — essentially, the game mechanic has to be a dynamic representation of X.