I understand and believe in value of learning through board games, and have incorporated them into my classrooms – both elementary and higher education – throughout my decades long teaching career. I would turn off my camera and mic as this was their time and often a highlight of their weeks. The kids could remain on Google Meet while they played and discussed multiplayer games such as Among Us, Fortnite Creative mode (I couldn’t ethically agree to violent games in a classroom setting), Roblox, and Rocket League. During that time, I built in a gaming club whereby for a long, 2-hour lunch one day a week we had a gaming club. I understood this was a problem throughout our time doing remote learning from March, 2020 through the end of the 2021 school year. This isolation is not only creating a deterioration in social skills, but also, when children are asked these days about how they feel, the most common answers received are ‘bored’ and ‘lonely’ ( How the pandemic is affecting children’s social skills). Lack of social interaction is creating a domino effect on children across the world. Peer interactions and relationships are how kids learn not only about cooperation, trust, loyalty and support, but also about themselves, understanding and expressing their own emotions, making well thought out decisions, coping with challenges and accepting responsibility. The pandemic has brought about a worldwide lockdown state, and children’s interactions with other humans have become limited to that of their immediate family. The pandemic has brought about huge disruptions in normal life for humanity as a whole. We know that the kids didn’t have these developmental experiences during the year+ of isolation from their peers. This allows my students to engage in and develop the social skills that were sorely lacking during the pandemic. I started bringing them back again this year after remote learning due to the COVID pandemic. but haven’t for several years focusing more on using video games with my students. Years ago I brought board games into my classroom. I definitely liked the thrill of winning but equally so interacting with my friends while we played the games. loved playing The Game of Life, Clue, and Sorry with my friends as a preteen and then Backgammon throughout my undergraduate years. As a kid growing up, I loved board games.
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