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This blog post speaks to a variety of benefits and ways to introduce video games in the English Classroom. Several games are discusses as well as gamification principals.

Imagine yourself living some two million years ago. Your survival would have been mainly through hunting and food gathering. Slowly, as the human species evolved, (around 70,000 to 80,000 years ago), they started hunting small game. The word 'game' here means any animal hunted for food. The term game was used as a medieval hunting terminology in the late 13th century. It has its origin from the old English word 'gamen' which means joy, sport, or amusement. Then, as man evolved to the agrarian stage, around 12,000 years ago, he learned to domesticate a few animals and, alongside, grow crops. This was the time when hunting started to become a sport and also a source of food. And gradually, man started inventing different types of games and sports for various purposes. Now you may wonder what the difference between a sport and a game is. A sport is usually a physical activity. But some non-physical activities like chess and bridge are called mind sports. Games, on the other hand, can be physical or mental. All sports are games, but not all games are sports.

Imagine yourself living some two million years ago. Your survival would have been mainly through hunting and food gathering. Slowly, as the human species evolved, (around 70,000 to 80,000 years ago), they started hunting small game. The word 'game' here means any animal hunted for food. The term game was used as a medieval hunting terminology in the late 13th century. It has its origin from the old English word 'gamen' which means joy, sport, or amusement. Then, as man evolved to the agrarian stage, around 12,000 years ago, he learned to domesticate a few animals and, alongside, grow crops. This was the time when hunting started to become a sport and also a source of food. And gradually, man started inventing different types of games and sports for various purposes. Now you may wonder what the difference between a sport and a game is. A sport is usually a physical activity. But some non-physical activities like chess and bridge are called mind sports. Games, on the other hand, can be physical or mental. All sports are games, but not all games are sports.

Daniel Floyd's video on Video Games and Learning featured in Mark Chen's HP Catalyst Academy's Crash Course in Gaming. The video provides a strong context for the value of tangential learning provided by games. It is presented in an 'in plain english' style.