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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
unfortunately games are becoming like the movie industry, only the big titles with big budgets make it on store shelves. Hopefully novel gaming wont go the way of the Bruckheimer.
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.
Also, sim city 2000 and myst were great in terms of general intelligence building. And don't forget the EV series! Now I know a bunch of major star systems. Bernard's Star here I come! Yes, it really does exist, however not all stars from fiction are real. I don't think fiddler's green exists.
Anyhoo, a healthy dose of non first person shooter games can be good for the brain, and while those shooters certainly improve reflexes, the RSI, frazzled nerves and raised blood pressure of a good net match are hardly worth it.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
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!
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.
This reminds me of the F-22 test pilot on the discover channel talking about how the new kids who grew up with video games are unbelivably good at flying planes.
Apparently flying a modern jet requires tracking lots of things at once and the gamer kids are pretty good at it.
I also recall many pilots saying that the number one cause of crashes was pilots believing sensory input over guages, and how easy it was to fool your inner ear. I'd say this would be an advantage to vid game based learners, because gauges are all you have to rely on in a PC game. Further, I don't recall ever seeing a guage in a simulator program of any type that gave inaccurate info, ever.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
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.
If you have a kid that doesn't want to learn in the classroom environment, but instead only wants to play games, then, yes, playing strategy, RPG or simulation games is better than just deathmatching Quake for hours on end.
However, if you're wanting to teach that problem kid, there's surely better ways than sitting them in front of a computer with a stack of games.
What's next, computer training by downloading pr0n - think about it - learn all about caching, searching for passwords, virus checking for trojan pr0n, proxies, ad blocking, ftp, IRC, KaZaA, etc. Excuse me, I must go now to write my book and get interviewed on GameZone...
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
okThis is a prescient interview. The market for gaming would explode if game publishers consciously took the time to embed learning scenarios into games.
If this was done in a way that didn't seem pedantic; that didn't detract form the 'fun' or 'challenge' of the game; that permitted the player to branch to new experiences once certain 'pedagogic principles' were mastered; gaming would reach a new plateau - both in terms of cultural influence and sales. Every parent would run out and but a game console, no questions asked.
This is the most compelling way to help people to "fail on the way to mastery".
Imagine that a parent hears that little Suzy will do better in school (or on her SAT's) if she plays games that help her to learn the principles of elementary geometry, grammar, etc. as a part of playing the game, *without her consciously realizing it*. Clever game design could accomplish this. (Why isn't Wolfram Publishing authoring math game?)
Of course, in many cases, conscious awareness that directed learning is taking place could also be permitted, as long as the game's design created stimulating scenarios that compel participation.
This is really just the very beginning for games as learning tools. Years ago, in cognitive science seminars, it became clear that the best 'artificial' way we had to instill learning skills was through simulation. This is still true, and remain so for some time.
Really, games are immersive, simulative, experiences. They will become more immersive, and sophisticated (in terms of simulation) as time goes on, processors get faster, broadband becomes a non-issue, and designers realize that learning can be fun.
The future for this sort of thing is absolutely unlimited. In fact, there's no reason why serious simulations and models of very complex environments won't eventually be brought before very sophisticated learners (politicians, medical professionals, genetic designers, etc.) to help them "think through" potential consequences of their actions.
Frankly, this is the most important pedagogical development in that last 100 years, if not longer. It will have import far into the future.
Just about every learning activity that children indulge in is a game. Shape puzzles, lego, etc. Even with animals learning has always been a game.
This makes you wonder why there is so much anti-videogame sentiment, and its sad that its only now that more people are looking seriously toward computer games for child learning.
A friend recently got married and has their first child. Both parents have firmly ingrained computing habits, and hence the child has spent a lot of time in front of a monitor. At age 3, he knew how to operate the window's quicklaunch in order to get to media player (kid loves to watch stuff from Pixar, and they use the PC as a VCD/DVD player). Near age four, he could navigate most of the start menu. And the child isn't a geek either, he runs around much like any other and is a bit of a bully in school actually.
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
Those same kids, however, are very interested in TEH XBOZZZZ and all that. If you could somehow make education fun, like "Typing of the Dead", and things like that, i think it would work. The problem is, right now, that education games aren't fun. Not to most kids. Even the younger kids are being influenced by the older ones into thinking that anything that even remotely involves something other than porn or guns is bad. As such, i think i have a formula that may well be important to note in this instance:
*breasts* + *violence* + * = FUN GAME
Knowing this, i think we need to add more, like, shooting games and things to the educational genre. Quake III: Preposition Death Match. Dead or Alive Volleyball: XTREME Spelling Mastarz. Things like that.
YES, games CAN be good learning tools, but they also can be harmfull. It depends on the game. Almost "mindless" kill-em-all types of games seem to me as a waste of time as "educational tool" (one might argue "but they improve hand-eye coordination and... - and they would be right... but that's not education). Almost (and I repeat, almost) all games have SOMETHING that is good in them... even the crappy ones (oh well, make you realise that they are crap and help you build your own oppinions). PROBLEM is that not every type of game is good for "teaching" usefull things to the younger people... and the danger exists (in the nowadays MMOGs trend) that you will encounter vulgar language (which by itself, in small doses is not harmfull, but when in excess... no comment). What I want to say is... what happened to QUESTS (Lucasarts, oh where art thou), to REAL strategy games like "Gengis Khan", "Nether Earth"(that one's for Z80)... those were more than usefull, both entertaining and educative. The current "computer game industry" trend of "if more buy it it is good" and "more violence sells better" is a big problem. ___ As a "bottom line": IF it would be SCIENTIFICALLY proven beyond a shadow of a doubt for any dimwit (in the Congress or where they might be) that certain types of games ARE of educational value, it will be a major step forward.
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
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).
I am currently learning Japanese by playing Final Fantasy X-2. Maybe more "increasing the knowledge thereof" than "learning," but I do have the dictionary handy and would pause at instances where I don't understand and look up the word.
It works wonders because
1) it teaches you slang that's sometimes not in textbooks but people use often (must have good dictionary, however)
2) you brush up listening comprehension
3) you can pause the damn thing (try that with TV - well, one without TiVO and the likes)
4) subtitle
5) it provides a mental reference about the words, when I see "furikaeru" I would think to myself - ahh, Yuna says this in her final monologue and such and I can use the game scenario to remind me of the meaning; etc.
So, games can definitely be a learning tool. In fact this the most fun I have had learning yet.
Of course, as a friend puts it, an equally effective way may be to find a - ahem - sex toy who likes to talk during - ahem - activities. But looking up dictionary during such activities may be slightly inconvenient.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
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
Ha, a bit of deja vu here. Wasn't that what they said when TV came out?
Problem: I've played a lot of educational video games, and all of them were boring. It certainly would be cool if a game could unconsciously teach useful things, but in 20 years of gaming it has never been done, and I see no evidence that it's possible.
E.g. I've played a platformer designed to teach math. In between the platform action, you would pick up items that froze the game and forced you to answer an arithmetic problem before you proceeded. Or a ecology adventure game that would bother you with popups about wildlife. Such things can only detract from the game. But can you propose any way to teach arithmetic without posing arithmetic problems?
Educational games are just another futile attempt to "make learning fun". The problem is that you can't make learning fun by mixing it with unrelated things that are fun, like shooting things and jumping around. You have to make children feel that learning is fun for its own sake. And the only thing that can do that is a good teacher.
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]
That definitely depends on which games you play. So long as there's a good mix (ie not just RTS and FPS, like what seems to be dominating these days), it will be just like books. If all you read is war books produced by the army to convince people to join them, you'll probably become a braindead little capitalist soldier. If you read a good mix across all of literature, you probably won't.
I think maybe the trick would be to continually enhance old games to have today's graphics standard to ensure that people have a wide choice. Perhaps generic version of these games should be written, that can plug into any "generic" graphical engine, and be re-used with progressively newer graphical engines...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
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.
Games where you have to interact a lot in a non repetitive way might be useful educational tools, as are books, as is a group classroom experiment, etc.
However, I have yet to see a game that really wins on any of these points, although they are all complements to real learning. Chat rooms do not even have conversations in English any more, it's all LOL and ROTFL and smilies. I've even seen people in chat rooms who barely type anything else, in fact they probably just point and click macros that someone else created instead.
Programming and logic, and of course hand to eye coordination, can be learned from computers. Doesn't beat real sport, which adds 3D sensory perception and much better spatial awareness. A good learning game will not beat a good book for improving literacy, but it might help with rule based learning, like mathematics, grammar and vocabulary building by repetition.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
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.
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 kid you not; i learned how to read playing the old school sierra games - king's quest and space quest. you had to be able to read and write (albeit pretty broken sentences, lol) to play them, and i got so jealous of watching my older brother playing them that i learned to read by watching over his shoulder and then playing by myself.
i even got skipped ahead a grade in reading when i entered elementary.
this guy's got a great point.
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.
I grew up on a strong diet of board games, card games, word games and later video games - I thought it obvious that games aid learning.
In fact, this is how most of us learn pretty much everything at an early age.
Why is it that these 'revelations' keep on cropping up when it's been known for so long that kids playing aid thier learning, no matter what form the game takes ?
Have the 'power that be' that critisise video games got so powerful that people have forgotten the fact that games are good learning tools ?
Still, it's nice to see this kind of article and more articles praising games could help to balance out the crazies who blame video games for all social ills.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Basically, if it weren't for Wizardry (and, later on, Matrix Cubed), I wouldn't be posting this now. This is enough proof for me that computer games can be more than just pretty distractions.
>|<*:=
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
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.
Honestly, I might not have been interested in learning how to count in hex if it weren't for Questron and the Commodore 64.
You could edit the character files in a hex editor and give yourself gazzilions of $ or HPs:)
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.)
There was a boy at my old apartment complex who was mostly orphaned, he was being raised by his grandparents. He was well behind his age group at the age of 10 when it came to reading. Be it the Yorky I walked regularly, or the fact he liked checking out all the computer gear I worked on, he attached himself to me. It didn't take long for me to notice he could barely read. I got a pretty good handle on what the kid liked and I hooked him on two video games. I got him hooked on Illusion of Gaia for the SNES which required great amounts of reading admist quite a bit of overhead action. I also got him hooked on Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers on the PC (he didn't know it was capable of talking, and I turned the voices off). Granted, a somewhat scary adult targeted (and old) game, but considering his stacks of Playboys and scary movies okayed by his grandparents I deamed it acceptable in his case. After just two to three weeks his reading skills had more than doubled. He never compleated eaither game, but he did spent quite a few hours on each.
Later he found a 486 in the dumpster with Debian installed on it. Well, hated to do it, but I reformated the drive and put Win98 on it, after I gutted it and put a P166 in it. Hey, he was only 10 or 11 at the time. His grandma had heard all about ebay and wanted to check it out. Perfect! I worked for an ISP at the time. I spoke to my boss/CEO, he allowed no setup fee and the first six months free, I paid for the next six months after that. He knew that I was on IRC at work all day (it was part of my job), I showed him how to bring up the JAVA client (I had more control over that than a normal client would allow) and he chatted all day. At first it would take him serveral minutes to type a poorly spelled short sentance in the room, to the point you almost didn't realize he was there if you weren't looking for him. Within six months he could keep up.
It all started with video games.
Before I moved out of that complex his grandmother left a thank you letter under the windsheild wipper of my truck. It's framed and hanging in my computer loft at home now.
Two months ago I got married. That kid, now 16, was my best man.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
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!