Pokemon Go has potential for curricular connections
Over the summer break for school students, Pokemon GO was released in many countries and has millions of players in the countries where it has been released.
Pokemon GO is a mobile game first released on July 6 and puts a new spin on the game franchise, first released in 1996. The new game is inspired in part by a prank played by Google in April 2014 and is played by players walking from place to place or going about their daily lives as they swipe upward on their phone to catch Pokemon, battle for control of gyms for their teams, and collect items from pokestops, and hatch their eggs that they received at pokestops while trying to be the best like no one ever was.
Though free to download and play , the game does have in app purchases, but players can avoid them by going to certain places such as churches, historical landmarks and other places that are either pokestops or gyms in the game. This allows the in-game currency and items to be obtained for free if the player gets out often enough and lives near or by a gym or pokestop.
A few things in the game such as its GPS requirements, use of the metric system and requirement of the player to walk to progress in the game could help students to learn outside of the classroom and help their community with their teachers who could plan field trips, events and start clubs, allowing some lessons to be taught outside of the classroom while helping the community in and/or around the school as they play the game. This could especially be welcome at AHS, which has gotten stricter on its cell phone policy, and rarely has students going on field trips as part of a class, helping their community in some way.
While it would give opportunities for teachers and students to make progress in the game, some, if not most teachers and even a few students may feel that it could hurt the field trip or activity since some students may focus more on the game then the field trip or activity, even though they would agree that there could be academic potential to aid lessons and classes such as geography, history, psychology, sociology, etc.
One such teacher is Mr. Gray, a teacher at Airport High School, Pokemon go player, and part of team Mystic (blue team.)
When asked if he foresees the game having academic correlations such as those mentioned earlier along with possible field trips and GPS coordinates, he said, “It could.” He then said that GPS coordinates aren’t displayed in the game itself and as far as for field trips, he had this to say “You aren’t guaranteed to get Pokemon.” He then said he actually thinks it might hurt the field trip “because if one is too busy catching Pokemon, they might miss out wherever they are.”
While it is true that at least one student who may focus too much on the game, if a student is good at listening and is trustworthy, if a rar Pokemon shows up such as a dratini or pikachu or some other Pokemon, they could alert their classmates and anyone nearby and help make sure everyone can at least catch at least one rare Pokemon while everyone else has their phones on and in their pockets as they focus on the field trip or other school activity while hatching their eggs as they walk.
This could be used as a way to build teamwork between students as well as by having students take turn being the watchdog or in this case “Watchog” so that one student doesn't miss out on too much of the experience, which could go well with Airport High School’s new ELITE program which stands for Engagement, Leadership, Integrity, Teamwork, and Empowerment.
For more information on Pokemon updates, events and other news, you can go to Serebii.net or the official Pokemon.com websites.