Storm Evader Summary

The article “Storm Evader: Using an IPad to teach kids about Meteorology and Technology” by Amy McGovern, Andrea Balfour, Marissa Beene, and David Harrison found on the American Meteorology Society website in volume 96, issue 3 published March 2015, is about the advancements of technology in education and specifically in the area of Meteorology. The article begins by discussing the shortage of workers in science, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Also, that it is important that children are exposed to and learning STEM skills with the hope of having more STEM majors in the future. The goal was to attack this problem through video games. Even though video games are viewed as a form of entertainment, they are being used more and more

First, I learned that most video games used as educational tools today just engage children, they don’t actually teach them anything. Throughout my educational career so far, I have played many educational video games. By reading this article, I now realized I learned very little from the educational video games that I played they simply just engaged my interest. Also, I learned that there is a national shortage of workers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. I, myself, don’t have a large interest in STEM field, but I never thought there was a national shortage of workers. Now that I think about it, I realize that I really don’t know many people that work in a STEM field. I believe this is because growing up many kids view STEM subjects as difficult or boring, which is why it is a good idea to incorporate games that pertain to STEM subjects because it will change how STEM subjects are viewed. Lastly, I learned that the goal for educational video games is to engage and teach children a concept without the children even knowing that they are learning. This idea surprised me because whenever I played an educational video game in school I usually knew the game was trying to teach me something, because the game would usually wasn’t trying to hide it or wasn’t hiding it well enough. I think that educational video games, such as Storm Evaders, are becoming increasingly better at hiding the educational value of the game and making it