1. Assignment Paper
Educational vs. Entertainment
Name: Valenzuela, Jernianne Kaila M. Date: July 27, 2009
INTRIST Section: S11
Educational and entertainment are two separate concepts, but in the area of educational
softwares, these two usually go together. Some critiques agree that a game, which is
educational, is more effective to students that the entertaining one while some believe that a
more entertaining game is more effectual. This clash of ideas starts the discussion on
Educational vs. Entertainment.
Educational, by definition, is a concept which serves to educate, instructive and is
related to education. On the other hand, entertainment is an act of entertaining and an
agreeable occupation for the mind. Entertainment is something affording pleasure, diversion,
or amusement especially a performance of some kind. In my own point of view, these two
concepts are both relevant in designing an educational software. Learning, for me, is nothing
when you are not having fun. Well, I think the way people judge still depends on their own
learning styles.
Educational games are games that have been specifically designed to teach people about
a certain subject, expand concepts, reinforce development, understand an historical event or
culture, or assist them in learning a skill as they play. They include board, card, and video games.
For me, there should be a balance between the educational and entertainment side of the game
especially if the users of the software are children since most of them learn more while enjoying.
Since they have short attention span, it is better if a software is designed to entertain the
children and at the same time, they will learn a lot of concepts from it. On the other hand, when
the users are adults, it is fine for the software to be more educational and less entertaining.
Since the intention of adults is to really learn, I think it won’t matter much to them if the game
has only little entertainment on it. An educational game is called educational obviously because
it is for the purpose of the user to be educated. If a software is more entertaining than
educational, I think it should be further developed and improved.

2. The software that we critiqued was the GCSE Geography. The good thing about the software
was that the game users were really guided while playing. Instructions were easy to grasp and
understand and there was also a lecture presented before starting of with the activities.
Unfortunately, there were more bad things about the software than the good side of it. The
graphics were poor and there were no sound affects at all which made it too boring. I noticed
that the game was designed to be only educational because there was no entertaining part on it.
The activities and the game interface itself were also not attractive and interesting. If I have the
chance to develop and localize the software that we critiqued, I would like to make a design and
create activities that most Filipinos can relate to. I would include games about the location of
the many tourist spots, significant details about the different places in the country, appropriate
sound effects, interactive portions, and most importantly, locating different places using the
map of the Philippines. I would not just localize the educational software, but create different
versions of it. Since the GCSE Geography was focused only in Europe, I design different
editions of it which would depend on what continent or country the user wants to play. I
would also design a catchier interface and develop a game which is both educational and
entertaining.