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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."
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-A Proud and Gay Nigger
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When playing Grand Theft Auto III I got certain phrases on my mind("I kill you gringo!"). It occured to me that it might as well have a little wider repertoire of more useful phrases in some foreign language with optional subtitling, and I'd be able to pick up something while playing.
Of course, even better would be a game with a lot more interaction, something like a Sierra-style adventure game.
Actually, it's personal experience too, I learned quite a bit of English from 80s text adventures.
Haha, the original EV games also teach you that an invincible space pirate named Captain Hector will hunt you down if you don't register your shareware within 30 days...Good times...
Anyways, here in Cupertino, CA (courtesy of Apple Computer), we used plenty of video games in elementary school for learning purposes...Cross-Country USA and Cross-Country California for geography, Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail for history, Reader Rabbit and some others for English and other skills, and one other castle-based semi-RPG for learning logic skills (fun game)...We also used spreadsheets to learn some "accounting" and mathematical skills...Combine that with the regular Nintendo and computer games (especially sims) that my friends and I used to play, and I think we learned quite a bit from computer games as children...Fun and educational..
There's a project in the works intending to teach (written) Japanese from scratch through a CRPG vehicle.
I hope the owner manages to finish it... After completing the game, people could then progress to those Japanese CRPGs that were never translated!
This perhaps becomes viable because of the volume of other Japanese-language games in the market... I'm not sure how well this general technique might apply to other languages, however.
ask and ye shall receive:
d ex.html
http://www.fstream.net/~akira/project/japanese/in
A quickie list...
- Hand/eye coordination: any FPS or racing sim
- Logic/Problem solving: Lemmings, Tetris,
- "Anti-social" socializing: IRCs "gimme ops!" game, The Sims, RPGs,
...
- Coding: IRCs "scriptz", That old C-Robots game, ego contests
- Capitalism 101: _$Latest_Sequel_ Tycoon,
...
- Physics 101: Scorched Earth, Soda,
- Dancing like a spaz: Dance Dance Revolution, EOL.
- Boring facts: "Research" for
/. posts, Trivia games, Google whacking (or whatever it's called.)
Anyway, teaching boring facts is the last thing that should be emphasized in school or games; rote memorization is not what our brains are optimized for, and it'll become increasingly unnecessary as "brain augmentation" (like Google) improves. (And no, dear Luddites, technology is not a crutch.)--
Power to the Peaceful
I know this is a bit off-topic, but I find that DMing pen and paper RPGs has helped me become a better public speaker. It has also helped me develop the ability to use rich descriptions where appropriate. Games that encourage interaction, even if only amongst a few people can be beneficial. Especially when people cannot shorten "you" into "u".
/me skulks away.
I really, really loathe those people.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
I've been playing computer games since about the time I learned to read. It's amazing the things I've learned.
I've learned TONS of geography. For example, I can tell you approximately where Bombay, Calcutta, and the Himilayian mountains are in India, thanks to games like Railroad Tycoon 2. I know where a lot of cities are in the Caribbean thanks to Pirates!
I was reading Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond and he was talking about how fledgling societies that start near an abundance of natural resources tend to grow more quickly and advance faster. Anybody who's ever played Civ could have told you that.
I've developed more of a vocabulary through encountering words I didn't know in an understandable context. I learned about storytelling through adventure games like Grim Fandango.
I learned tons of problem solving. Wasteland and Everquest reinforced that often, using a little bit of brains is more important than using a lot of might. I've learned about consequence (killing NPCs randomly means you sometimes can't finish quests that involve them) and diplomacy.
I learned a bit about math and statistics from playing RPGs like and influenced by AD&D from all that dice rolling and min-maxing.
I learned about the principles of the stock market and speculating from playing BBS games. And about supply and demand economics from online MMORPGS.
Games often tend to mimic real life, even when they include imaginative elements, and often do a great job of taking a complex system and making it simple and understandable by putting it in a larger context. It gives people the opportunity to explore a subset of a subject thats accessible to someone without much of a background in that topic area, and the knowledge gained can then be used as a stepping stone into more complex topics that are more directly applicable to the real world.
As you can see, the above topics hit a wide variety of areas. I think that playing games gave me a better appreciation and a better foundation for the multitude of topics that I would encounter later in life. I've always wondered if it would be possible to write an interesting book entirely on the multitude of areas that computer games reflect real life -- because I think non-gamers simply don't realize how broad the correlation is!