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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 would like to point out that his discussion of playing games "proactively," or thinking about the design of the games and how they work. From that point of view, just about any game, played that way, should teach some fundamental rules of logic.
I actually have some trouble thinking of which "entertainment" games would be good for teaching individual facts. Several discuss how to make gunpowder (hardly what you want your kids to be doing), but most really screw up most of the fundamental science. Perhaps the best use of video games (also discussed in the article) would be to inspire children (and adults) to look stuff up. It's kind'a off topic, but I've read a lot about mythology since Stargate, SG1 started airing. Video games should be able to inspire similar interests.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
People only say 1 of 3 possible sentences.
Thou shalt now cross over the trees into that other land, for there are most largest beasts there to tear you apart.
Seriously though, I guess you can easily learn problem solving, the try and try and try again principle, patience, extended mental focus/concentration...which may be really good for ADHD children...I've never seen any stats but it seems resonable to me. You can also learn, in a well made game, that your previous actions will indeed have consequences - something that many parents in this culture do not teach their children.
Very reasonable man I would presume...and also some very reasonable ideas.
I wish I got paid to sit and make thoughts like this.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
Games are dirt cheap compaired to movies to develope so the problem is dealing with piracy that kills small developers with nitch markets. It also drives more popular games to be swallowed up by large comapanies that can deal with the loss of piracy.
In all the years I have spent playing games I can't think of much I've learned. I'm sure I would have learned more -- a lot more -- if the games were my only source of information, but reading and REAL LIFE covered 99% of any game long before I played the game. What kids should really be doing is reading and have parents that encourage and take part in teaching/learning.
In German we use the verb "begreifen" for the process of understanding something that you learn. That verb contains the "greifen" which means that you can grab something. And yes, I believe that kids of 3 years old learn the world by touching it and grabbing things and not by simulating the world on a TV monitor.
And BTW, for my kid I found a sort of "catalyst" to make her learn. Its simple, cheap, runs without batteries and she enjoys it a lot: Books.
While he may be right about games being a learning tool, they can't teach everything. The problem with video games is that they often replace other sources of entertainment such as reading. In your opinion, what is more educational, a computer simulation or a book? Even if they were equal in this respect, most kids play more games than they read books, or they spend the time watching TV (something for the most part uneducational and mind-numbing).
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okI remember in grade school that all the "smart" kids owned NES or PC games.
Possibly because all the families that had enough money to buy these toys were generally better off families. Families that are generally better off generally have parents who are smarter and more high energy. These are exactly the same kind of parents that are more likely to work with kids, talking, encouraging them to read, reading to them, etc from a very young age.
ahem. hi, my name is p*something*, and i, too, was once addicted to video games. I started at the age of 6 when i got my hands on an early version of nintendo, 8 bits. i stood ground on every platform available to my mid-western-@ss, learning to program, hack, fix my gear.. i, because of a shear love for games, learned to program various languages, navigate and manipulate in serveral platforms, then versions, then chip set variants.. then came the short wave, then radio anten, wifi, war-driving, and all the meanwhile, i was enployed by companies who hired me due to knowledge of the technical world. - .. a world which will never leave us, so as long as the economy resides in modern western hands. (barring a miracle) so.. i should say from my experience, gaming can definitely lead one child to a situation of progessive learning curves, only mimited by his or her own imagination. please, mod parent down for bogaRTING.
-P
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Bad eating and exercise habits make children fat and lazy. Mostly it's bad parents that are responsible.
I got a nephew, he plays video games, he spends time in front of the computer but he's also very active with physical games -- a bit too active in fact I feel sorry for his parents.
Computers are now an undeniable part of society, and it is the responsibility of parents to prepare their children for entry into the modern world and there's no better way to start than with video games. I am appalled whenever I see people in their 20s who do not yet know how to operate a computer.
Why the hell is this considered controversial? There's something horribly broken in the adult mind if playing games and learning are separated so badly. Why do people think kids have this urge to play anyway? Learning is the whole point! That's why they do it!
Play is a natural technique for young people and animals to learn the skills they will need as adults. Social skills, survival skills, everything. Our brains are wired so that we play to learn and learn best while playing. It's as simple as that. If educators got this into their heads we would have a much better school system.
[insert witty quote here]
This is presented as though it is original thought, but it really isn't. There is lots of research into education and video games over the years, and in the UK I know of several current government funded programs explore the use of video games in schools.
The reason that we haven't seen more educational video games is not because nobody has thought of it, but because it is so expensive to produce them. In the early days of personal computing - when most software was written by individuals - there were loads of educational computer games, many of them very well designed and fun. But these days you need a budget of millions to create a game, so unfortunately there aren't so many educational titles around.
Three year old kids are more competent than you imagine! They can play simple games, but do normally require a bit of supervision. The biggest problem is that at that age they can't read, so navigating menus and interpreting any messages that are given to them can be a problem.
now Game developers could put REAL messages in their games.
I remember Civilisation II, and how I was disapointed that the best way to run your government was 'Fundamentalism' and it was minerals for production, farms for food. Very Simple.
Also SimCity3k where the only people that mattered were petitioners who wanted a money making scheme. Just imagine if a SimCity player gets to be mayor of a major city.
I'm not convinced quake doesn't have good implications for brain use. If you look at it as a game where you "run around and shoot people" you may as well be watching some action movie. But a serious player will be doing a lot of things to keep track of what's going on in the game. For example;
.5 seconds)
:)
1) remembering spawn times for various items (eg. just picked up the armor, so I should return in 25 seconds to pick it up again) a good player should be able to do this for quite a lot of items at once (which won't always have the same gap between spawns)
2) keeping track of your stats and team mates stats and locations,
3) working out opponents possitions from audio cues, map/tactical knowledge, previous experience of playing the oponents.
4) respond to team comunications, either voice comms or text, I've been playing for years and still can't absorb the infomation from a top clan using text comms when I'm watching a game, they can do that while playing (new instructions/information every
5) Some people will actually keep track of enemies ammo count (normally only in 1on1 games and with non-rapid fire weapons), listening out for explosions and such when the enemy is out of view.
These aren't logical/reasoning skills for the most part, but being able to do this while running around and trying to concentrate on shooting people isn't easy, and is exactly the sort of multi-tasking skills that have been mentioned as the sort fighter pilots use. This also isn't some thing most people have naturally, but I think training your brain up to be able to deal with lots of information like that is useful.
Anyway I think deathmatch games involve a lot more thinking than you might guess
Your anecdotal evidence about smart kids owning these games, if true, would indicate correlation, not causation. A correlation means two items are related, but it doesn't indicate which causes which, and there could be lurking variables. I recommend you take a course in statistics.
When I was in frickin high school, call it about 1983, our physics teacher and resident hacker Steve Kremer told me, "There's no such thing as games, only simulations." Man shoulda written a book.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
These are all real issues, and since he doesn't address them it's a big problem for his interview. It's very easy to talke about games, but there are a lot of games and to treat them all the same is extremely problematic. There are non-computer games (lots), computer games, violent computer games, multiplayer... etc. I am so sick of people conflating computer games and violent computer games, you get this script kiddies here who think anyone who dares to question the violence in computer games is attacking everything including Myst.
His article really isn't news either. It's been well known for a long time that all smart species play and learn from games. Human babies? Love to play! Primates? Play! Lions? The same! Kittens and puppies? They play all the time! It's a form of learning.
It's also been known for some time that stories are an important part of human history. Before we had writing, everything was an oral history, essentially, a story. Storytelling is a vital and ingrained part of the human experience. The Odyssey? Beowulf? Stories! (That makes four problems.)
All I learned from Wolfenstein was how to shoot Nazis with really big guns. I used a sprite editor to make it gorier and cheats to ensure I had enough ammo.
All I learned from Dune 2 and the Bard's Tale series was how to isolate hex values in save games to give myself huge amounts of cash, experience, or god-like stats.
All I learned from Mario Bros was (with apologies to Jefferson Airplane) "One mushroom makes you larger; One mushroom makes you small. The mushroom your mother gives you doesn't do anything at all. Go ask Mario -- when he's 32 pixels tall!"
I learned from SimCity that parks are good for land value and reduce pollution, but that Godzilla can smash them just like anything else.
And from Sierra games, I learned to save early, save often, save before interacting with a NPC in case they don't like how you act around them on the first try.
And in all that, I didn't learn much of anything about real life. So MUDding was quite a shock. So was college. I'm kind of surprised that I survived at all...
Moral of the story: As with television, a good parent should be involved with their child's media intake to ensure that the child is actually learning useful information about the *real* world.
Kaze!