Henry Jenkins, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Comparative Media Studies Program and co-founder of The Education Arcade, is quoted in the article, PoughkeepsieJournal.com - Video games open portals to learning:
One thing that stands in the way of video games gaining acceptance in secondary schools is the stigma attached to them...images of the Columbine school shootings and other violent acts still linger in people's minds when the topic of video games is brought up.Nobody is talking about using educational games to put violence into schools. The video-game medium shouldn't be reduced to the issue of violence.
There is also an anxiety that occurs when some teachers are forced to deal with new technology. But this has become less of a concern over the years.
On the positive side, the generation of teachers who are in their late 20s to early 30s were children at the point when video games began to become a central point in media and culture. They grew up playing Super Mario Bros.
Dr. Jenkins had me right up to the Super Mario Bros. reference...it would have been nice to have associated those younger teachers with a video game that is more educational (not that I have a clue as to what that might be), but his point is well made. There is an incoming generation of teachers who had fun with video games. If armed with appropriate resources, this generation of teachers could take the lead in making games a viable tool in education.