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Education Via Video Games
An anonymous reader writes "According to Wired/AP, food stamp recipients will now receive video games instead of brochures and pamphlets, in an effort to educate them on how to get the most benefit. One wonders why someone that can't afford food would have spent money on a computer on which to play these games."
Sounds idealistic? Yes, it does. But lets also not forget that this UN body last year fed more than 100 million people.
Food Force will be free, either as a CD or as a download from the internet. The WFP is also looking at distributing it in schools as an educational tool
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Sorry, we lost Carmen Sandiego, Tetris and The Oregon Trail to software piracy. Remember kids, don't copy that floppy!
World Food Programme (WFP) seeks to capitalise on the popularity of video games to educate youngsters (target audience of children aged between eight and 13 years old) about hunger and the work of the aid agency, and not to those who cannot afford food.
a sp:
There could be better ways to do this, since educating using games seems to be a flawed idea.
From http://www.game-research.com/art_myths_of_gaming.
Not long after the birth of computer games the first hopes for the potential of learning through games were expressed. Wouldn't it be great if the enthusiasm exhibited when playing games could be used for good, sound learning? Since then, several commercial games showing various degrees of success have been labelled 'edutainment' - a combination of the two words education and entertainment.
However, neither the education nor the entertainment part has been very successful in these titles- combining the two has turned out to be a tough job. According to the proponents of learning through games the main potential lies in the ability of games to increase motivation through the interactive nature of games, putting the player in control of the learning and the game's options for adjusting the level of difficulty. However, it seems that most edutainment games have problems living up to these reasons for using games in the first place.
In her book Dataspill - Innføring og analyse (translation: Computer games - introduction and analysis) about games Eva Liestøl analyses five different games. She finds that the one game that does not let the player choose his own path through the game world is the edutainment title. She doesn't press the issue but if you look at other edutainment titles, you find the same pattern - educational titles seem to take over the control and narrow down the game universe to make it fit with the intentions of the producer. These intentions are often to convey some specific information about a topic. Closing the game universe and conveying specific information does not fit well with traditional game dynamics, where simple and general rules are the backbone. In stead, educators have to a larger extent turned to the adventure genre, where it is easier to focus on information, but they have found out that even here it is hard to convey the necessary depth of an educational topic.
Furthermore, very few studies have delivered hard evidence that games can be used for learning. Typically the research has been directed at putting learning into games and then assuming that this learning somehow came across to the player. But the ambition should be higher than this. It is not enough to have 'some kind of learning' in games. To truly say that games are great learning tools we must prove - or at least make probable - that games are better than other learning alternatives. And here we are still a long way from the goal - so the dream of games as great educational tools, remains a dream. (- Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen)
have a decent job,
buy stuff like a computer,
lose that job,
sidenote: call the benefits line that handles food stamps and get india on the line (as they did in Wisconsin)
get a lousy job and need food stamps
make $24K with 2 kids and still need food stamps (as in Santa Clara county)
take any advantage they'll give you, even, yes, instructional video games
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If you live in the country, you can let your kids play outside. If you live on 98th and Foothill in East Oakland, and you let your kids play outside, there's a reasonable chance that they might die or get into serious trouble. Having a TV to keep them occupied -- and inside -- may not seem like such a luxury at that point.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I believe Pratchett through Vimes also makes the point that the very poorest go barefoot.
Being able to afford a crap car indicates that you're still quite a long way from rock bottom.
When you can no longer afford that cars running/repair costs, cannot get to work, cannot live in an area with public transport or jobs in walking distance... Only then do you know poverty.
When you hit that rock hard ground level, where the bottom rung of the ladder is several feet out of reach and there is nothing you can do to get started on it, and your entire familly is down there with you...
When you have learned what weeds are edible, how to snare a rabbit, how to keep wild apples fresh for winter, how to make preserves of wild berries, how to raise chickens from fertilised eggs begged from the farmer who's land you live on, how to set lines and fishtraps you don't have to stay with...
Not because you want to, but because this is the only way to keep your painfully large familly fed without sacrificing your kids schoolbooks and uniforms...
I was 8 when we hit bottom. I was 16 before my parents had a TV again. I was lucky my parents put in such effort as they did to minimise the harshness of life at that time.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Actually, I think more of the Ultra-poor with children have cable / satellite TV. I've been on several mission trips (Go do work on houses for free), and while not all had computers (most) Every single one had cable or sattelite TV because in a lot of places their is nothing else to do.
but the article says:
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Well, I came from a welfare...region. I'm from an Indian Reservation and perhaps your experiance with welfare and poverty is different than the 21 years I spent there, but from what I've seen and experianced, once the welfare comes and doesn't stop, the people strive for just being, year after year, generation after generation. It's not because the Government screwed them 100 years ago, it's because the Government is screwing them right now with throwing money at them. Why are the Cheyenne River Sioux being paid the third time for the land the Oahe Dam flooded? Why should they work at anything? If the Feds paid them three times, well, sue again, get more money for nothing.
If you think Crack or Crank is a hard monkey to get off the back, try having the Government shovel money into your hands year after year.
In the United States, anyone that wants to can get off welfare. Anyone, if they can stop making excuses for themselves. For all the people who are on welfare in the United States, there is at least one person who came here from much worse conditions and is successful.