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Videogames, Learning, And Literacy
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a GameZone.com article interviewing Professor James Paul Gee, the author of a new book advocating videogames as a learning tool. According to Gee, "It dawned on me that good games were learning machines... Many of these [game-contained] principles could be used in schools to get kids to learn things like science, but, too often today schools are returning to skill-and-drill and multiple-choice tests that kill deep learning." He goes on to reference "good learning principles" built into games like System Shock 2, Rise of Nations, and Arcanum, and advocates early gaming for learning: "In my view - and I know it is controversial - kids should be playing games from early on, from three years old, say."
I wonder if he'd adopt me?
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Some other noteworthy lessons...
I learned how to jack a car from GTA3.
How to fire a machine gun from Quake 2.
How to run over pedestrians efficiently in Carmageddon.
It's true! Didn't you ever see that Seinfeld where George had to play real-life Frogger to get his Frogger machine across a busy street before the battery that held his high score ran out?
If only he had a little more practice..
-Rylfaeth
Playing through the campaigns, you certainly find out a lot about history. Shame microsoft didn't pause to get their facts straight first though, as now there will be a whole generation of kids who think that Erik the Red found America from Greenland (when it was actually his son, Leif Erikson).
the RSI, frazzled nerves and raised blood pressure of a good net match are hardly worth it.
Sounds like excellent training to deal with cubicle work under tight deadlines and frustrating meetings with PHB's.
That should have read, "I spent countless hours". Good lord, how embarassing. Let that be a lesson to all. Just because you've learned proper grammar from a game, doesn't mean you've learned to proofread posts!
I learned how to jack a car from GTA3. Run up to the door and press the triangle button?
Really Prof. Gee, did you have to provide scientific proof that my kids are better off playing Counterstrike instead of working on their history? Some help you are.
I think playing through the great SNES RPGs of the Golden Age (Final Fantasy, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Tales of Fantasia, Secret of Mana, and so on) was a very important, formative, and educational experience for me.
Among the things I learned:
You can never carry more than a certain fixed number of objects.
People may be small moving 16x16 blobs from far away, but up close they turn into large still images.
Don't hit anyone, because if you do a little number will bounce out of them and it's kind of unnerving.
When just wandering around in life, you'll need a wide range of area attacks to keep little problems at bay. But when facing a major crisis, such as Kefka or the Profound Darkness, you need big heavy single-target attacks.
Two or three people co-operating can be much more effective than one -- but only if the game supports combo attacks. Unless it's Chrono Trigger in which case the combos are weaker than individual attacks. I guess there's a moral there.
It is possible for an art to flourish and die out completely not only within one lifetime, but within just a couple of decades.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.