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The Role of Video Games for Children
jZnat wrote in to alert us to a BBC article discussing the role of video games in the classroom. The New York Times (registration required) has a more general article regarding young children and their relationship to video games. It's interesting to see the major news outlets refer to gaming in an academic light, and without the usual "the sky is falling" theatrics.
...kids will sneak textbooks into the classroom and read them under their desk.
Interactive learning tools have a lot of potential, especially for learning outside the classroom, but I have trouble believing that a video game can be more engaging than a good teacher.
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Kids + games = interest. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing has a racecar driving mode, and from what I recall (going back 10-15 years) that's what most of the computers were doing during typing, rather than the boring screen plus keyboard. Anything you can do to learning to help make things *fun* for the kids is an important step towards getting them interested and motivated on the material.
It all depends on the game and what you are trying to learn.
Books, video games, TV are all the same in this respect.
All three can teach various things some better than the others.
But there are also mindless books, mindless video games, and mindless tv shows.
Video games can be a great learning tools, but they can also be a pretty good waste of time(though usually fun).
But the same can be said about books and tv.
Ok done rambling.
Civilization, the game, should be required parts of any school cirriculum, and should I ever have kids and homeschool them, they will play something like it.
Civilization is an extremely unusual game, even in its supposed genre of turn-based strategy, because it is not a wargame, it is a resource allocation game. You have a very, very limited amount of resources, how do you spend them? The answer to that is quite complicated because of the realistic number of ways you can spend them.
More conventional turn-based wargames typically have at most a handful of ways to spend resources (fairly generic infrastructure or troops), and are much more generous with the number of troops you can pump out, because that is what the game is about. You rarely end up with a choice between building a defensive unit, or finishing the Granary.
This is obviously a continuum and I can't say I've played all turn-based strategy games. But the Sid Meier Civ games (including Alpha Centauri, my favorite, and not including Call To Power, which as the name indicates is a military game from what I've heard) are far over on the "limited resources" side. The only other thing that comes close is SimCity.
Civ can teach several valuable lessons that many people never learn, and that probably includes many people reading this message:
- No matter how rich you are, you can't do everything. Your expectations rise with your power.
- Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. (In a two-player Civ game, a "rush" is only viable if you do it right away; otherwise the other player may out-infrastructure you. This is particularly true in Alpha Centauri, where you can make a very tightly targeted defensive unit, which results in them being quite cheap.) What seperates a First World civilization from a Third World one is the infrastructure. (Also a culture that makes sure to maintain and expand it, and not destroy it for short-term gain, but that doesn't come up much in Civ.)
- Military conflict isn't the answer to everything, but sometimes it is the only answer, especially when the troops are knocking on your door.
- Related to that, there is a big difference between being prepared and not being prepared. One of the biggest mistakes I personally make almost every time I play is to overallocate to infrastructure, and neglect my military, until someone comes a-knocking, at which point it is often too late.
Of course, most people aren't going to face the problems a Civ player faces literally in real life, but the lessons are still sound and the evidence suggests a lot of people still don't learn them. How many people run around thinking the US is infinitely powerful, and therefore think (we can provide infinite free healthcare for the world)/(we can engage in any military endeavor infinitely safely)/(the US could come over and fix my country but they are just to lazy and greedy to do so)/(nothing could ruin this country so who cares about fixing huge money sink X)? As you can see, the attitude is not a characteristic of one political side or another, there are weak thinkers on all sides who think and act on this premise.In this case, I would like to point out that I'm not necessarily emphasizing the "military" aspect; consider "invasion" as a stand-in for many other problems as well. A hurricane isn't all that different from an enemy attack in effects. The "preparedness" is important; if you have to interrupt yourself to deal with an emergency because you weren't ready it can be immensely disruptive.
I don't know how to teach these vital things. But video gaming, a.k.a. "simulating", in a controlled and otherwise-harmless enviroment, is the best guess I've got. Better to learn these things from Civ then the first time you get a credit card... statistics say a lot of people learn this lesson then, too.
Conventional teaching just won't work with this. You can say this as much as you want, but the vast majority of people learn from experience. At least give people a good opportunity to learn it safely.
So this is slightly off-topic, but I thought it a fun coincidence that I just got through interviewing someone for a job who I had invited to the interview specifically because of the video games she played.
Somewhat more on-topic: there's a great essay in The Video Game Theory Reader on the role of computer games in the classroom. Check it out if you're interested.
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