Computer games = Learning?

The gaming market has become the fastest growing market for leisure and is one of the most popular forms of homeentertainment. This has generated a media debate about how people are affected by gaming and concernes how we are affected by the violence that may occur in games. Games proponents argues that gaming is the future of teaching and computer games are becoming a sustainable and popular instruction strategy. Some studies have long used computer games for educational purposes. By interviewing high school students in focus groups as qualitative research, I studied their attitudes towards computer games as a learning tool. Using the indie game Minecraft, the online game World of Warcraft and the simulation game Euro Truck as examples, I have asked high school students what skills they believe can be obtained by using computer games as a learning tool. Focusing on factual abstract learning, social learning and practical application of learning. The result shows that high school students believe that some learning can be achieved by most computer games, but the knowledge obtained is not necessarily the skills that can be applied in reality. The results also show that high school students lack practical application of learning, and they think that computer games are a great tool to visualize factually abstract knowledge. When it comes to social learning they believe that it gives the opposite effect and make players asocial