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Games Better Than Books?
cellullama writes "Some of the leading video-game researchers are saying that games are better for teaching than textbooks. Three University of Wisconsin professors just said schools and corporate trainers should learn something from Halo 2 and Half-life. My workplace is already doing this (but don't tell my boss.)"
... now where's my shotgun?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Half Life 2 could teach newtonian physics really well. If they just let you pick up creatures and slam them against walls....
Games may be better at teaching certain things than books, but they can never provide the kind of mind expansion that reading a lot of novels can. People already read little enough. Replacing books even at school will probably reinforce this trend even more - and prepare a whole generation where the majority of people will not have bothered to read a single book! What a sad state of affairs that would be...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Is there a corresponding team of book researchers saying that books are better for teaching than videogames? I'd tend to side with them.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Interactive learning has always been known to be better than passive learning any teacher will tell you that (remember the board games they use to teach you ABC?)
It's just that most people in a position to add this kind of technology are not qualified to or do not see the benefit of doing so.
The education will catch up with the technology eventually and then we will see something new.
But I am convinced there will be hell on earth soon.. I have already made preparations.......
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
"Three University of Wisconsin professors just said schools and corporate trainers should learn something from Halo 2 and Half-life" So they want a 3 year delay before new learning material comes out... but hey, the graphics are great!
1. kids don't know they are learning.
;)
2. kids do things they find fun, and as much as we might try, they will learn from other kids that "reading isn't fun, playing games is fun" no matter how much fun reading really is or how suck the games really are.
so to that end I encourage having your kids play some of these games if they want to play games:
1. Typer Shark
2. Bookworm
And if you can find some old-school "Number Munchers" you're on your way to gaming-learning fun. I've placed these two games on desktops I've built for younger cousins and family friends, and the response has been quite good. They learn to type (Typer Shark, duh) and spell (Bookworm) in a creative and fun fashion.
(Me? I... uh... waste my brain away playing World of Warcraft, personally, but "I'm allowed to decide for myself, being 27" just don't tell the wife...
MORTAR COMBAT!
But you can learn a lot more in reading a simple paragraph than you can from running around in the environment for a half hour.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
The whole thought of "video games being better" is a really interesting thought. But I think that people should consider the motivations behind reading and other things those crazy teachers make you do. Reading is a cognitive task designed to build certain areas of your cognitive ability that a video game simply can not do. Just like practicing a Calc problem you already know how to do may seem pointless, it still makes you better at Calc.
History based strategy games like Rome Total War, have taught me all I know about Roman/Greek history - Ok its not much, but previously I cared not to know, now I do... pitty games cant learn me to spell...
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
"games are better for teaching than textbooks"
Yeah right, but the real question is: are they better at teaching useful things than textbooks?
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
"You can use Neverwinter Nights as an application development environment"
Indeed, my half-elf character class is "Application Developer". He was known for his programming prowess in all of Neverwinter, until his job got oursourced to dwarves in Waterdeep. Then he went all ballistic with a bow and arrow and has been chaotic evil ever since. It's sad.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
What kind of responsibility do the game makers have to keeping a historical game accurate? Will new games need to be developed as learning games, or will they only spark in interest, and people will still need to pick up a book to get more information?
Number Munchers. Even now I would play that game on occasion. And all the game involves is answering short addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as quickly as possible (for the most part). Add in some basic sound and parental encouragement, and you might end up with someone who scores 800 on the math portion of the SAT. (Or in my case [redacted], but I still hold a suspicion that the answer key was wrong on that question, damn it! And that was 12 years ago... gotta let go someday I suppose. ;)
MORTAR COMBAT!
I think we con not compare Books and Games. They are just two different types of entertainment. You read a Book or play a Game in different situations, different places and with different moods.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Although books do transport one to another time and place, they are passive. A reader might imagine "what they would do" if they were in the character's pace, but they never get to try out that action. In a game, the player takes an active role: monitoring the situation, responding to the events of the game, and learning from their actions. The point is that if books have any built-in trial and error, it is a canned sequence that the reader has little involvement with.
It's a separate question of "what" people learn from games, especially violent fragfests, but that's a another topic.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
There was this one game developed by Koei for the SNES and PC called Uncharted Waters: New Horizons. I played this game constantly, and learned a good deal about geography from it... definitely more than I did from my geography class. However, I will conceed that not everyone will enjoy these games, and learn from them... but compared to most (but not all) of the history/geography books I see, games would be much preffered.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
I had to GRADUATE from college to start reading at all, and I've read four books nearly non-stop, and with a good attention span to boot!
The article in question doesn't draw the line between novels and learning -- novels are stories, and if it's a good story it can be very engrossing, though as my experience can prove -- it's not a task taken up by every person, nor easily taken up, especially with my own propensity to watch TV rather than read because it's easier.
I think this article refers more to younger kids learning, but since kids have a propensity to learn much faster and much better than adults, logic would follow that a computer game that uses some algorithms to determine how fast a person is say, learning to do arithmetic, can pace that child and accelerate his learning as compared to traditional books. And since the introduction to technology is generally a learning experience in itself.. it just opens a child's mind more and makes them better 'learners'. This is a great example of why each generation tends to be smarter and more productive than the previous one, though I'm convinced that my generation (24 years old here) is probably the laziest generation -- but we are still damn smart.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
If you can get the same amount (or more) of material into a video game as you can in a book, the game will obviously be much more effective. The ease of just being able to try something over and over again to see how changes in their behavior affect the outcome almost instantaneously is leaps and bounds ahead of any textbook I've seen.
This, of course, assumes that the target audience isn't afraid of computers or other such techno-gadgets.
You can indeed learn from games, for example, from playing Wing commander I learned how to get some annoying coworker replaced by a sexy female coworker. First order the annoying bastard to keep radio silence and then keep blasting him until he explodes. Oh, Angel Deveraux, I still pine for you!
First problem: When did you last visit a school with a computer that's good enough to run Quake? The education budget in this country, at least, is sorely lacking, and as such the IT facilites of most schools are little or none. My old school couldn't even afford a licence for Microsoft Word; we were still using Works when I left less than two years ago, and on pentiums on Windows 95.
Secondly, I can imagine Half-Life 2 being used to teach kids physics. I mean, its physics engine is better than the real world's! But can you really imagine kids using games to learn, when they could be using games to play and have fun instead of listening to the teacher?
There's a reason learning games are so boring, you know.
~~Every few years or so I'm accidentally fashionable!
Ditto for "Age of Empires". I have cousins who enjoy playing the missions and then reading the between-mission historical information. Yeah, it's not much, but it's more history than you get from playing Halo 2 on XBox Live! all day.
For spelling games -- hell yeah they can! Check out PopCap Games Typer Shark and Bookworm. Failing that, get into online Scrabble or something.
(And likely I have spelled something incorrectly in this post. I always do. Peace.)
MORTAR COMBAT!
Primary schools have known this for years; why is it assumed that when a child reaches 12 or so they suddenly become, or should become, burgeoning intellectuals? The "everything I know I learnt from Doom" post above may, on the surface, appear trivial but in fact the skills - particularly those involved in strategy games - can do nothing but good.
I would only suggest that the gore is toned down a little until the little tykes get to, say, 9. Level 9.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
"Today's homework is to program 20 new players for Madden 2006." (And that's just the Gym class assignment).
END OF LINE
Check out this project. This is a sort of language/culture simulator intended to teach both languages and customs to soliders being deployed overseas. The whole thing is based on the Unreal game engine. There's a lot of potential for using video game tech as instructional technology.
Games are great for teaching somebody how something works in a once-through, overview sort of manner. It's like reading every header in a textbook but with tripple the chance of remembering it.
On the other hand, games suck for looking stuff up, which is where textbooks excell. Also, a good textbook is far better in terms of brevity. It's like comparing doing an experiment to reading about it. You want to do some experiments, yes, but I'd really rather not test relativity myself.
I'll keep my textbooks and my easy-to-look-up data, thank you.
I have been waiting for Young Lady's Illustrated Primer type game for years. Seems like games could be slightly skewed to teach better patience or thoughtfulness or agressiveness at different times.
A few things might benefit, but replacing books with video games? On the advice of the video gaming industry??
Ok then gaming industry, put your money where your mouth is. Write a really great game that teaches Calc I. Go ahead - I dare you.
"Dude, I totally fragged you with that asymptote!"
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Point taken. :)
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
Number munchers was awesome! I would play that all the time at school back in the day. Then again, I'm also one of the 4 people who liked mario is missing.
But otherwise this is total bullshit!!!
Look where many rich IT-millionaires put their kids. They go to those elite private schools where they use computers as little as possible. Even less than in your local city center ghetto. You have to write with a pen. Write a lot. Do things in your head in the old way. Hand held calculators are luxury.
Good education is when you learn to think. Sitting behind computer you learn to copy paste information. Not good.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
This statement would be much stronger if it included the word "sometimes" within it. Some kids would love to learn History by playing out a civil war campaign or the crusades or whatever in some sort of FPS game, but there are others who are much more inclined to read about it. There are also subjects that I think that books are necessary (say Calculus for example). You could add to the learning process by making a Jeopardy or quiz game to the mix, but a Calculus book will still be a core necessity in the learning process. I would be all for putting in some more itneractive computer based learning in schools, but books will always be there and should always be there as a resource. (Also don't forget about the smart kids who would try and mod the games so the outcome is changed. I would laugh at the first news report from XYZ High School where some student modified game code so that the South won :P)
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
In my technology and civilization class in College we had to memorize quite a bit about WWI warplanes.
I was playing Sierra's Red Baron at the time, and you actually got to fly all those planes. It was much easier to learn those specs when you had to fly using them (and fly against them) in mock combat.
I think a education/gaming revolution would be a true innovation that would create a huge advantage to any country that adopted it. I don't mean glorified quizzes and gameshows...I mean actual simulation of the things we're supposed to learn.
What do you want to do?
.... etc
>Look
You see your manager sitting opposite you, she is holding a sheaf of papers
>Examine papers
You can't do that.
>West
You bump into a filing cabinet. You cannot go that way
>I
You are carrying:
A PostgreSQL manual
A chewed blue pen (full)
A cup of black coffee
An NTK T-Shirt (worn)
A scarred Battle axe.
>Use Axe
When I was in school, we had 1 or 2 Apple //e computers in some classrooms and if you finished your schoolwork in class first, you would get to play Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, or Number Munchers on the Apple //e. In one class, the teacher even had an Apple //gs which could play Tetris. He would play on an overhead projector while you did your classwork but the same rule applied, finish your work quickly and you got to play. I can still do basic multiplication tables or diagram a sentence at a furious pace!
MORTAR COMBAT!
"Games" is just another medium, like text or pictures. It has its advantages and dissadvantages, just like any other media.
Unfortunately it is still in its infancy, hence no works of Art yet.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
This game taught me so many things like don't forget to remove your condom before going outside or the cops will arrest you for indecent exposure.
Sample this!
Whenever I think of true success to an education game, Oregon Trail (and it's sequels) keep coming back to mind. It was a perfect way to teach the trail, the locations, and common problems. Not only that, it was fun.
The only problem is that interactivity, on it's own, does not add to the experience. It needs to be engaging. Sadly, few games can really mix this well (Spare the other MECC Games, The Learning Company, and Star Wars: Droidworks).
I've had two hours of sleep in total, so I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here or how to end it, someone feel free to dissect my post.
What kind of responsibility do the game makers have to keeping a historical game accurate?
The same responsibility that book creators do.
But you raise a deeper point. What is the true purpose of learning history? Is it only to understand a set of facts about the past? Other than a flash-card game structure (rote learning wrapped in a game), history is ill-suited to gaming because history is fixed.
But what if the true purpose of learning history is it to prepare the student for making political decisions in the future. A game that teaches the consequences of political/governmental decisions may be more powerful than a historically-accurate docu-game. The student would be able to try alternative histories and learn the likely consequences (better or worse) of not sticking to history's script. A game, such as SimCity, could form the basis for some powerful lessons in civics and government.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Now I can solve all those tough engineering finals with a BFG. Sweet.
I was playing a game (don't recall it's name), but at a certain point I had to board a train.
There where two trains in opposite directions traveling with different spead to eachother, had to figure out when those trains where going to meet eachother.
Come to think of it, the room I was it looked a lot like a class room. I wonder...
replacing professors with games. LAN party field trip anyone?
You get a C+, for the effort
Everyone knows that what you really should use is the chaingun. A berserker and a chainsaw would also have been an acceptable answer.
These scientists are full of crap. First of all, you can't seem to get too many kids involved in a game that does not have you carjacking someone or killing aliens. Second of all, you can't get the depth and breadth of knowledge you get when reading. Sorry, I just don't buy the premise. Kids need less video games, more playing outside in the real world. Little Jimmy is going to learn a hell of a lot more falling out of a tree every once in awhile then he will playing some educational version of Halo 2.
Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
Im sorry but over the last couple of month i realised professors tend to speak more and more bullshit. You don't have to be rocket scientist to know that games overall are more appealing to kids, instead on focusing on this maybe they should try and develop more recreative ways of teaching, which in many cases are allready applied in schools. It seems recently professors are more devoted to bringing controversial statements/findings to the public rather then trying to find something usefull for the developpment of our society. Maybe I should ask a professor of my University to do a study on the useless study that professors undertake?
Ahhh Oregon trail, was there anything better than hunting pixelated buffalo? We had the same kind of settup in some of my classes as well. We had the old boot from real floppy disk computers that came with a math racing game. The quicker you solved the problems the faster your speed would be for your car. We were only allowed to play if you finished your work and you had to be quick because there were only 4 machines and 20 kids.
So, kids will play video games for 12 years and then come work for me? Part of education is learning how to do mind-numbing a tedious work so you can become a part of our economy. If education was always fun, it might kill a generation of working class people. Data entry isn't Halo 2. Or Halo for that matter.
That game taught me that if I sucked... I would die.
I guess the Romans sux0r3d.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
And yet, somehow, games don't influence behavior. Violent and antisocial games can't teach such behavior in real life. And girls don't get twisted self-images from playing with Barbie dolls. Of course games can influence behavior - that's one of the fundamental advantages of the human mind. We "play" to experiment, often entirely in our imagination. Those results can influence us for the rest of our lives. Of course, experiments confirmed with multiple physical experiments, like touch, sight, sound, location, posture, all override the flimsy near-dreams of imagination. But couchgrown kids who play exclusively in videogames, who never play with other kids outside, have little reality to contrast with the cartoon game experience. Parents have to make their kids go play outside a lot. Videogames might look safer, but they are the sugar cereal of the mind, making rotten bones and flabby muscle of character that can haunt the kid's mental health the rest of their lives.
--
make install -not war
"Some of the leading video-game researchers are saying that games are better for teaching than textbooks."
In other news, some of the leading book publishers are saying that books are better for teaching than games. Film at 11.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Ahhh, the good old days! Those of you younger than 35 or so aren't going to remember how much fun it was learning about digital cicuit design on an Apple ][ with Rocky's Boots written by Warren Robinett -- the guy that hid his name in the Atari game Adventure and kicked off the whole easter egg craze.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
This isn't a terribly huge surprise... After all, simulators have been around for a long time teaching people. Games these days are pretty much simulators.
Simulations interact with more areas of the brain, and engages the participant more actively. The more engaged your attention and focus is, the more you'll learn. That's why a lot of people prefer to learn by doing. Doing virtually is probably the next best thing people have come up with.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Books and games have already been combined! Anyone heard of Choose your own Adventures? How about the RPG-esque Lone Wolf Series? I used to have like, 20 Lone Wolf game-books....er..when I was younger. Yes.
shame on us / for all we have done / and all we ever were / just zeroes and ones
I've been playing online games for years with english and french speaking people (starting with everquest 1).
:)
I met a ton of people who would have benefit(? bear with me if incorrect, please) a lot from reading instead of playing, especially when it comes to spelling and grammar. That's true for french players typing/speaking in french, and US players typing in english.
I can't count how many times I've seen "it's" instead of "its". And then there's the abbrev problem common to a lot of games, where people tend to use shortcuts to avoid learning complicated words (like rez for resurrect, and plz for please(sigh)). Yes, I know most of the time, these abbreviations are here to help communicate faster ingame, but I suspect some people are glad they don't need to remember how to spell 10+ letters long words.
In such cases, I guess books will always beat games in terms of learning material.
The article mentions halo, half-life, I don't see really what these games teach except not to jump off a cliff. At least they teach you not to launch a grenade if it can bounce back and explode at your feet (been there, done that)...
Anyway, as long as a lobby becomes powerful enough, you'll always find researchers to formulate whatever truth you need to make it more powerful (what was the name of that expert payed by the tobacco companies to pretend that passive smoking was just a rumor ?).
PS: To the smart trolls willing to pinpoint my own grammar and spelling errors, please, remember english's not my mother tongue. And translate that text in perfect french first
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
MyBlog
I've played Pacman as a kid and if Pacman had affected me as a kid I'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music. Oops...
Blog
Leading fast-food researchers say that fast food is better filling than health food. They advise schools to start taking contracts out with McDonalds.
These guys job is to research video games. They chose it as part of their career. Of course they will favor video games. Oh and I suppose not related is the fact that these professors will be the ones creating these "teaching games" and selling them first.
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
Someone better make sure these so called "scientists" aren't really teenagers looking for a way out of class...
I think the researchers should read "Amusing ourselves to death" by Neil Postman.
/ 104-9479439-5627925
In it he discusses the expectation that education should be entertaining. Here's a review from Amazon.com:
Reviewer: Nicholas Carroll
Although this book was written in 1984, the ideas in it are still relevant to today's world, even moreso now than back then. This is one book that I wish he would update with new chapters, because a lot of the critiques he made when he wrote this have taken on new meaning in the events of just this new century alone. For instance, his main critique is how entertainment has infiltrated our culture with a focus on trivia rather than substance. No where is this more apparent than a state recalling a governor a year after he had won reelection by a significant number, and that such a governor was run out of office in favor of an ACTOR, who many hope the U.S. Constitution will be amended so he can seek even higher office! This, despite the number of conservatives who tell Hollywood actors to shut up about politics in the run up to the Iraq war. Politics used to be showbusiness for ugly people, but now its nothing more than an extension of showbusiness. Even televangelists are critiqued in Postman's book because of the lack of sacred boundaries that television does not have as compared to a place of worship.
When I read this book, I can see examples that have cropped up in the 1990s that have proven his thesis true. Cell phones is one example. Ever eavesdrop on another person's public cell phonecall? I'm shocked at the trivial minutaie that people discuss with whomever they are speaking to, as if what they are doing at that moment matters to another person. What we get in a society that always seeks amusement for fear of boredom is a constant barrage of images and distractions that don't really mean anything in the end. The way we teach our children in schools to study for the multiple guess tests instead of teaching them interconnected facts that build a story, a history, an appreciation for the interconnectedness of our planet. So, we end up with people who can pull facts out of their rears to succeed on gameshows like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?", where one question and answer doesn't relate to the next one. No wonder why people can't see a connection between our war in Iraq and our consumption of oil.
Postman is right...a society that seeks one entertaining thrill after another cannot survive and endure history's challenges for very long. When many people in the world haven't had their basic living needs met (food, water, shelter) while we are looking for the next entertaining thrill, what does that say about us? Why has amusement become such a huge, moneymaking value to our culture? When will we learn to balance entertainment with relevant issues that require serious study and attention? Why is our thirst for entertainment so unquenchable that now we're not satisfied with Hollywood's outpouring, but we expect entertainment from our politicians as well? These are questions that inevitably came up as I read this book. I really hope that Neil Postman will write a follow-up or update this book with minor changes (substituting references like "The A Team" and "Dallas" for "CSI" and "Desperate Housewives" for instance) and new chapters (like the phenomenon of Jesse Ventura and Schwartzenegger as governors; the use of cell phones for minutaie details; and the proliferation of reality television shows). But despite that, this is worth a serious read and discussion.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140094385
This is old-old-school but it's what I started with.
Laws are for people with no friends.
It really depends on what you're trying to teach doesn't it. Games are a model of reality. Games aren't reality. No game can give you as wide a scope of thought as reading a bunch of books can. Books still EDUCATE better than games.
Games on the other hand are better at TRAINING than books. If you want to learn a skill then computer based training is the way to go. You can get a lot of experience in a short time.
Guy plays Doom, blows his neighbor and proclaims himself as an expert in open surgery...
Please! Deep thinking is about abstract thought. There is nothing more abstract than funny little symbols on a page that you have to assemble into meaning.
If teaching becomes a largely a visual process, you will lose a lot of that abstraction. Maybe that's great if you want a lot of trained monkeys to run a production line, but if you want to expand people's minds, give them a stack of philosphy, physics and math books.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I always wondered why people have to talk about it like it's a contest and that there is one perfect medium for learning. I think you hit the nail on the head in that books are better for some things and games maybe now are being seen as better for others. Seems pretty straight forward to me that a well-rounded education uses multiple techniques.
meep
This article seems to be more for older education, but my wife read in a parenting magazine not too long ago (I don't remember which one) that recommended not relying on games & TV to teach small kids.
The thought was that books force kids to form new neurons at a much more rapid rate than games or television. Don't ask me how they measured neurons (I don't have enough to know). They also said that the moving visual & audio input can make it harder for kids to memorize new subjects because of the distractions they cause. They did say that games are a good & TV tools, but don't rely completely on them and use them in moderation.
I don't if games or good or bad, but with two small kids I can say that different kids learn differently so I guess it depends on what works best for you or your kids. I will also say that through my experience, things like counting & ABCs were learned much more quickly in books than toys (and we tried both). The games were nice, but they just wind up clicking stuff until they get the correct answer. Reading to them forced them to interact with adults who can help explain when necessary. Once they learned the stuff though, the games seemed to help reinforce it.
About the necessary skills in military life.
I learnt that no matter where you go, there's infrared-seeking guncams that will pump 1000's of bullets in you. "Terrorists" will stumble into these rooms while you hide near the kill switch conveinantly placed under the gun.
Enemies and aliens spawn in the most obtuse places.
Kicking a coke machine results in lots of pops.
The best skill is learning how I can get to a top of a building. If I get a running start and aim my rocket launcher at my feet....
I recall reading something, don't recall where, that recent generations have a hard time working things through themselves. New hires are needing their hands held more and more, requiring feedback on a regular basis. The one theory that was given for this was video games. Video games provide instant gratification, feedback within seconds and kids become accustom to this. I think can see this making sense, when I'm bored and need something to do I turn on a video game. After several minutes of playing things are good.
I find it different than sitting down and reading a book. Maybe it is better that kids don't have any extra access to video games, then again this could just be one persons theory.
At this years I/ITSEC conference the use of games in education was one of the main themes. It was pretty amazing to see different organizations using off-the-shelf games that cost $20 US as an educational tool (and it wasn't all combat either - there were communication based tools and even some form of surgical simulator, although that was probably less of a game). Heck, even Aeroflot (the Russian Airline) uses MS Flight Simulator (refrain from obvious comments) for language training.
Of course there is the obvious possibility that this will promote some measurable level of "negative training"in the process, but I suppose that is inherent in freeplay type environments. This is one of the big concerns...Give a student the ability to do anything and they will without regard for the procedures which can actually hinder the learning experience.
...to suck the taxpayers' money.
A few educational games are a good thing -- but taking cues from Halo and Half-Life is not a good trend. The last thing we need is more software that makes it hard to replace the computers whenever you get to (like all the old proprietary games that won't run correctly on XP, and a few things aren't even happy with Classic on OS X). And speaking of hardware, when you start pressuring the schools to have decent hardware for fancy 3D gaming you're going to have to go to a 3-year or less upgrade cycle -- and I know of a local elementary school that is using a fair number of 5-10 year old Macs because with a bit of occasional repair they still do everything they need.
The risk is taking a step back -- some of the K-12 textbooks anymore are not worth the trouble of carrying them into the classroom -- and lose the advantages of a good book (though losing the dubious "advantages" of bad books is a plus, losing the good books is a definite minus). Which is to say, if you're going to make a history game, DON'T MAKE IT A GLORIFIED SET OF DATE FLASHCARDS -- instead try to simulate an experience, and tell the story of what happened. The same goes for any subject -- good educational games are fun and actually tell you something worth knowing, but you'd be better off playing Myst than a boring "educational" game that is not really very informative.
Do we really want Super Munchers running on the Half-Life engine to replace textbooks in:
*History
*Ecology
*Popular Culture
*Astronomy
*Geography
*Anatomy
*Music
*Chemistry
*"And Much More!"
The original Super Munchers was good for drilling on facts to assist learning in other fashions, but its hardware requirements were not like Halo or something; it'd run on a Mac Plus running System 6.0.5 or a PC with DOS 3.3.
It'd be a better investment to get some better textbooks. High-end gaming isn't suited to the elementary school upgrade cycle, and I doubt many high schools are much better.
True, I think strategy games are simply brilliant for your mind when you're young. Its really not that deifferent from chess and no teacher will tell you that chess is bad for you unless they can't play it. I remeber a study (sorry - no source) that claimed cases of alzheimers were far less common in elderly who played chess. It naturally follows that this is the same for strategy games. I and others I know have been saying that games are good for you for years.
We don't stop playing becuase we get older. We get older because we stop playing.
Also, as Einstein said: 'Learning by exmple is not the best way to learn. It is the only way..
I tend to agree with a man with the achievements of Einstein. This is very similar to the learning experience of games. You play and learn inductive and deductive skills -> then you apply those skills when playing at a higher level. This recursively continues...
Is it just me, or does she seem a bit too good to be true
.com bust.
1) She likes video games
2) She's hawt
3) Her name is German for "beer cooler"
I reckon there's some perl script out there generating these web pages and a press release to go with 'em. It could pass on emails from venture capital companies to a human scam artist.
Maybe someone forgot to disable it after the
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
You know, when I first saw this, I thought it said "Games Better Than Boobs," and man that was just wrong.
But seriously, I have found myself thinking this very thing over time. I have learned more about history and geography from gaming than I ever did (way back when) in school. For example, SimCity can teach about zoning ordinances: it's not completely accurate, but you start to understand some of the intricacies of zoning and it actually proved helpful when buying a house.
I have one excellent concrete example of this process, too - and I wasn't even aware of it until years later. When I was just a wee little hacker, probably 10 or 11 at the time, I had an Apple ][ and a game called Rocky's Boots that I played an awful lot of. I just thought it was fun, in kind of an odd way. Imagine my surprise when I took my first digital design course in college. "Hey, I know what that funny half-moon shaped thing is!" So, I can say I totally aced all DD courses thanks to computer games.
Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
I think for some tasks, a video teacher (not game) would work better, like learning how to do something. Kids may appear to learn better from video games because it is something they are interested in and pay attention to it. I learn factual-type information on topics I'm interested in from books because I focus on the book. It's all a matter of grabbing kids attention and keeping it, video games are fun, fun gets their attention.
hack a day
I'm gang banging at an 8th grade level!
Research: video games decrease brain activity
You want to really learn about a topic? Try writing a book about it! Nothing like putting what you know down on paper to make you think about it.
EricYes, That is why I have this eigenpoll for Financial IQ Games.
http://all-technology.com/eigenpolls/fiqgames/
If you continue you are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I doubt I would have the job I have today if I hadn't worked on (and played) MUDs back in college. Those of us that managed to not flunk out went on to modestly successful computer science related careers. My parents and teachers used to chide me for spending so much time working on the game. This has taught me to never think I know better than what someone else is doing with their time or how they go about learning. Having more gold pieces than my would-be detractors corroborates this. :P
Speak truth to power.
Tell you what. The most gruesome, most nauseating images I've ever seen in games are from moulage simulations designed to train real trauma surgeons.
a good selection of them can be found here
Trauma Moulage - Ever wondered what they do to you when you're bleeding and unconscious?
More resources here, including a virtual autopsy
Yes, I tend to agree that (some) games are better than (some) books, but boy.... HalfLife! Halo! I don't intend to bash them but what can they teach one? Surely there are better examples. Heck, even a decent racing sim gives you much more food for thought and trains your concentration skills. Not to say that something like good adventure games are invaluable if English is not native for your kids.
A lot of commercial software packages could stand to learn from the better examples of 'newbie' tutorials included in complex games like World of Warcraft and Half-Life 2. For example:
User: "Okay, so I finally got the new trouble ticket system installed. Now what?"
[blinky little balloon pops up, says "Click me!"]
Deep Impressive Announcer Voice: "Customer service, too long ignored in this land, can finally be obtained! Start by clicking here to open a ticket."
[user clicks in the wrong place]
Deep Impressive Announcer Voice: "Fool! You have erred greatly in your judgment. You will pay the price..."
Um, okay, maybe not like that, but how many folks here have dealt with the 'gee, now what do I do?' syndrome with new users?
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
Everyone should read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. It's an excellent read and makes a convincing argument about how television has dumbed down education and public discourse. If you ever wanted to know what McLuhan was really talking about when he said "The medium is the message", then look no further.
A lot of what he says is directly applicable to the discussion happening here. In short, the medium of videogames is not suited to teaching anything remotely deep. If we want to limit what we teach our kids to a few interesting facts and sound bytes, then videogames are the perfect way to do it.
But it we want our kids to truly appreciate what they're learning and to leave with anything meaningful, then we're going to require that they spend some time pouring over a textbook. A good education demands that the student suffers a bit, but that doesn't mean its a bad thing.
It's like taking piano lessons: you need to slog through all the theory and tedious scales before you can play anything useful and interesting. Using videogames to teach is like showing a student how to pick out "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on a piano, and calling it a music education.
Depth. Seriously now, most game plots can be summarized in one paragraph, try doing that with Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum", or from what I've heard "The DaVinci Code" (which sounds to me like a new version of Eco's novel)
Vocabulary. Rarely, if ever, have I seen a game with any words I don't know. I can't honestly say games haven't done a thing to increase my own vocab. Books on the other hand, at least the ones I read, will usually require me to grab my Shorter Oxford or go online to look a word up.
Grammar/Spelling. Go look at your typical bulletin board (I don't count /. as such). People's grammar, punctuation & spelling has gone to hell. My own has certainly declined over the years since leaving college, but some of the spelling I've seen and sentences -- or should I say non-sentences -- are just horrible. I don't think it's just net shorthand, I think people's communications skills really are declining. I think reading less and gaming more could be partly responsible. And yes, I am a huge gamer (FPS, RTS, MMORPGS), but I can admit my mind and communication skills would probably be better served by more reading.
Visualization/Imagination. When the images are spoon fed to you in a game, there's no room for your own mind to construct the image like it does from words on a page. To process words into an image takes a certain amount of brain power, that 'here you go - here's your picture' never will. On the flipside, being able to thoroughly describe something you see in written form can be difficult - I think people write less to, not just read less.
The exception I might make to the above remarks would be module making. I've done some Neverwinter Nights modules - a good one requires the ability to understand basic coding, write good dialog, create a cohesive plot, and learn to tie in various elements (both story and programming objects). Even FPS design requires some thought & planning, map design, etc. I think from that angle, you can learn a lot, but in general I think the quality/depth of most games doesn't match a solid book.
You might be able to say many games ENTERTAIN more than books, but that's not synonymous with EDUCATE.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
...I thought books had already been abandoned as teaching tools.
Reading this with a dirty mind is rather funny.
Anyway... There is a lot to be said for wisdom vs knowledge. Of course games aren't going to replace all books, I wish the article put more emphasis on that. I would expect nothing less than a trollish post on Slashdot however. Games may allow people to learn CERTAIN things more quickly than reading about them. But is quicker always better? In war, would you rather go up against someone who has played many online battles in a game, or someone who has studied the subject and knows "The Art of War"? Contrast that with auto repair. Some things you can read about, but until you DO it, you don't get it.
I have a feeling that the best solution lies somewhere in a balance between the two.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I would have to agree that Rome teaches a lot, but its more of a simulator with some historical facts thrown in. As someone above posted, education should encorporate games, but not be just an either-or scenario - ie Read a history text book, read "Art of War", then play Rome:Total War as part of a carriculum. Now THAT would have taught me a lot more than just regular history class.
"If a sig didnt know it was posted on a fooruum.... what would you aKs it?"
Might this not be a shortcoming in the textbooks in use instead of a inherrent superiority in games?
I've not met a college/high school textbook I liked well enough to keep.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Leisure Suit Larry improved my vocabulary tremendously (it's where I learned the word "prophylactic"), and the quiz at the beginning taught me some things about 60s history.
These were two of the most compelling computer-based learning software examples I've ever seen. They date from the early 90's on Macs and only ran in black and white, later published by Broderbund... But they demonstrated all the concepts graphically and that's where I feel the strengths lie in computer-based learning. (Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any real links to it, it predates the Web by a few years...)
Anyway, the main draw in a game seems to be the competitive aspect (between you and someone else, you and the game, or you and yourself) and control. So... What if you had a mortar fight and you had to calculate the angle to fire the mortar using physics equations? If the game contrived a reason to have to know something in order to accomplish some goal (it's amazing how compelling the reward of lights and sounds, i.e. seeing your opponent blown up, can be), I think that learning would certainly occur.
Duh!
If games can replace books, then why do I need to go and spend $20 on a 128+page book on how to play any game I buy these days in order to get anywhere in it?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Some of the leading video-game researchers...
Pure hyperbole. One is a linguist of some note (Gee) and the other two are nobody assistant professors with a handful of articles in decent peer-reviewed journals.
Don't buy their conclusions based on their credentials folks.
but so does everything else. Movies could be as educational as books, and so could tv. However, TV and movies along with video games all have massive hit-driven appeal-to-the-lowest-common-denominator industries backing them. So yes, it is concievable that video games could become brilliant teaching tools (I believe the Chinese military even trains with Counter-Strike), however I don't think these games will ever be as profitable as games involving shotguns, explosions, and hookers.
I remember starting to learn astronomy after watching this anime show, knights of the Zodiac, but the learning I did myself. So it's all about incentivate learning on young kids, right?
I'm pretty sure there are alternatives to this. Maybe it's the education system that we're having that makes study boring. (Teacher dictates, blablablabla... kids get their wrists tired of writing so much, one starts playing with paper airplanes... is this what education meant to be? I can't imagine Plato dictating some text to his philosohpy students, but rather encouraging them to learn by themselves and question things.
Teachers make students learn, but can they teach the students to learn by themselves?
Games Better Then Books?
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
That running around and killing is more fun than actually learning?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
"Because games keep things "pleasantly frustrating," Gee said, players have incentives to keep on improving their performance. That can lead to learning outside the game as well. After his son started playing Age of Mythology, he started reading more about real-world mythology, Gee said."
Note that the last part involved reading. The idea isn't one medium replaces the other; they coexist together. That's how media has always worked.
On the other hand, decades of research have shown that *textbooks* are actually for learning, if used on their own. They're not constructed in a way that's easy to understand unless you have sufficient first hand experience of the phenomena.
http://joystick101.org getting in depth, with games.
I'm sure many students would pay to see Kant frag Hume over the necessity of the transcendental manifold.
Or
Evolution: Fang vs. Claw
Or
Chemistry: Nature's own Legos
Or
Sim Patients: Night Shift Pre-Med Resident
The key term is "corporate trainers" as this deals with vocational education of work skills. But how appropriate for any intellectual development?
Coincidence that I'm curerntly catching up my reading with Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death." I think not!
I remember spending a lot of time in my youth playing Tradewars on BBSs. I think that game encouraged my entrepenurial spirit.
"brxref
Yah I loved Oregon Trail. I learned so much about the trails and geography in general from that game. I also learned how to effectively shoot buffalos.
I hear people saying that video games are not as educational as reading, but in my experience, playing a video game IS reading.
Have you played Paper Mario 2? It has more dialogue than you can believe, and none of it is voice-acted, so you have to read it all. I'm not complaining, though. Most of the dialogue is hilarious.
http://www.wikibooks.org/
She's almost 3 and has been using educational games on the PC over a year. It was hard finding some games she could control the mouse with at 1 (close to 2) but we did and she's learned a lot from them AND from educational programming she watches instead of crap cartoons on other channels.
We also read to her, etc, nothing forced just what she wants to do. It all helps. Obviously, If you make learning 'fun' instead of a chore it's going to be more effective. Somethings are hard to make fun, from my recollection, but you do what you can.
The problems with "simulations" is that you only get the options they thought of and the goals they thought of and payoffs that they thought of.
Here's a good example: If you're learning computer science and the simulation only rewards you for choosing Microsoft based solutions because the guy who wrote the simulation likes Microsoft stuff.
Nothing beats the Real World for real world experience.
If it's done right, the companies offering the internships will give feedback to the schools and the schools can tune their programs.
Of course, that means that the school's programs will be slightly different each year as the technology and marketplace change, but the students will be more in-tune than they are right now.
but i haven't bought a new book in months. i read internet webpages, web comics, documents on theories and some of what amounts to home-spun novels on html....
i know this has sort of gone off-topic, but i think my point is that games aren't exactly a substitute for books, and a good book is always a good thing... but the web is a good alternative. keep in mind, kiddies: you have to be literate to surf the net (or read the text narrating the story in many videogames!) its still a different medium, different market, but it is by no means reducing the amount of reading that is done, and may in fact be increasing it, and that is ALWAYS a good thing.
Im 40 years old and grew up in the video games are evil world for the last 30 years or so. Videos games are not evil, yes they can be over the edge, but thats why we have those things called parents. Remember them? Parents teach their children what is right and wrong and choose for them.
I personally let my children play video games a few hours a day, they can tell you more about the history of the game (and maybe some real history becuase of it) and the articles/stuff they are using. They can also learn to budget, save money to buy more things, the thoery that working for something pays off in the end (and sometimes it doesn't). Pong wasn't the devils work, Asteriods didn't make me rob people for quarters, Galaxia Didn't turn me into a druggy. In fact they all turned me into a (i think) well rounded business man who works very hard to achieve his needs. sadly they never taught me to speel correctly.
I remember school, too bad you forgot. Suppose Kdan and me are at a library. I pick up a random book and then make Kdan read it, not just read it, but answer questions after each chapter. This is what school does, you do not pick what books you read in school, you have no choice over what you read, further you have to answer arbitary questions along the way. School makes people associate reading with boredom more than any other institution. I used to read when I was young, regularly I would go to library and pick up books like "Harold and the Crayon", Dr. Suess, Curious George, Berenstein Bears, etc. As I got older and in school instead of just reading and learning to read, they started making you read and answer questions. This is when my reading interest tapered off, school changed my perception of reading, it was something that was no boring. In high school I never read for leisure expect during Senior year when a teacher lent me Dune. At first I read just a few pages a day and it looked like I would never finish it, but when the characters were introduced, the Dune mythos was developed after 50 pages or so and the plot started picking up. I read the whole series quickly after that. Ever since that point I have become an avid reader again by accident, Dune taught me that all reading is not like in school, it is not all a chore.
Most novels do not provide mind expansion either. The bestseller lists are lately populated with crap like Dan Brown writing a historical mystery, Tom Clancy jerking off with techno-babble terms, Harry Potter, Stephen King who spends too much time describing physical objects and the setting, Orhan Pamuk with Turkish mysteries in a historical setting translated to English(as if there need to be shitty mysteries translated into English), etc. Novels are meant to entertain, if you want to learn there is non-fiction which is usually dry and boring, but human knowledge is recorded not in fiction but in non-fiction. Non-fiction is what expands the mind.
The advantage that computer games have over books is the ability to communicate.
In order to get the principle across the teacher/author has to convert the idea in their head into a syntactically correct string of text. The student then has to convert that text into the idea. In the same way that many people find maths incomprehensible, text is sometimes just not efficient enough. Even pictures sometimes fail in this task. Honestly how many young children (or even some adults) can understand an ultra sound image? Computer games can take a layer of processing away from the task of communicating the idea.
For example gamers will probably be able to remember every scene in a game, given enough time. You will be able to reconstruct the plot because you understand the logic involved. The logic is similar to the logic you use in every day life. How many times in exams have you tried desperatly to at least visualise the page in the text book that will give you the answer. Normally you will get as far as remembering the shape of the paragraphs but the information is just not there. In a game the information is equivalent to the shape of the paragraphs, as you have not needed to remember the how that abstract idea fits with the information in the book.
Retrieve idea from memory >Understand idea > use agreed upon communication method and encryption > Decrypt/process idea > memorise.
All this article says is that somethings are better learned by actually doing them rather tahnreading about them. ::GASP::!!!! Seriously.. who didn't know that?
What is your penile percentile?
Carmaggeddon was an invaluable tool for improving my driving skills! I can rack up splatter bonuses like nobody's business!
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
This is my area of expertise. I develop games and simulations for the adult learning market. However I have done much research in the area of child and adult education.
At the school education level the idea is not to replace books, but instead to get a person interested enough in a subject to read the book to get the full story. We have to capture the interest of people first. History class is a prime example, there are so many amazing stories to be told from history. There are exciting battles, political corruption, religious wars; but how do we teach it? We teach it with dates and names and places, the kind of thing that would make the best of us drowsy. A game on the subject, something interactive that the student can control can truly spark interest in a subject. I design games with the specific goal of teaching but there are thousands of games in the world that are there for fun, but they still contain information that is easily retained by the player. It's very important that these games are as historically and factually accurate as possible because it's through media that people today, not just kids, get vast ammounts of their knowledge.
There is a huge market for this type of interactive learning in all areas of western society, I don't think you should downplay the quality of information based on the medium in which it's brought. It shouldn't matter whether the information is in a novel or text, or if it's in the plot of a game, providing it's factual.
I'm from Canada, but my research has been taken from around the world. I've found that far eastern society students are better than western society students. We have to remember that not everyone learns in the same way. Not everyone can read a novel and are able to see the story unfolding in their head. Western society has a better potential for visual learning and interactive learning. Far Eastern society has been found to learn very well through written texts alone, but does that make them better than those that are visual learners? The answer is no, but why is it that they seem to make better students? It's because we haven't attempted to adapt teaching styles to fit learning styles, we've been doing the opposite and it hasn't worked for the mass amount of learners yet.
Hey, that could work. Make the enemies in Wolfenstein be Grammar Nazis. Use incorrect grammar or spelling, and they fly into an unstoppable rage and are much more difficult to beat, while simultaneously correcting your grammar for next time.
No, that's pretty stupid.
The enemies of Democracy are
Will you also concede that you never played any spelling games? I recommend SEGA's "The Typing of the Dead".
Pokéthulhu
Gotta catch you all!
I've got this great job with anomalous materials at Black Mesa research facility. It's really an interesting place. The best part is, i've never met my boss so I don't have to get any work done! I just spend all my time stealing soft drinks, chatting with my coworkers, and messing around with the security guy's desk.
Some of the guys here can be a real pain though. Every time I try to use the phone, this pointdexter barges in about how he's waiting for an important call. As if.
Then it seems everywhere I go, people are telling me i'm late for something or other. Buddy, I like it that way so get used to it.
I think i'll go take a nap in my cubicle. If only that jerk working next to me would just leave the lights off!
It's all those damn japanese games with bad translations. =*(
On a sidenote Typing of the Dead is a great game =)
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
The results of studies like this just seem to further push our schools into using more and more technology in place of decent teachers. They're buying all of these top-of-the-line machines every year for the school systems, when this money could be used to give teachers a raise, hire extras, or build more classrooms, all of which are always in demand, but can never be afforded.
Whatever happened to just making a child learn out of books and use a pencil and paper? Schools are making children so dependant on computers and technology that if you removed all of this from them, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. A child should not be required to have a PC at home to do schoolwork. There is just no excuse for this.
The first step of this was of course calculators. While a calculator is a very important tool, it's being allowed use in class more and more. My younger brother, for example, is taking a pre-algebra class, and they're already requiring him to have a graphing calculator. For pre-algebra! The graphing and calculations you learn in such a class need to be taught solely on paper, to force a child to be able to mentally evaluate these problems. If they don't learn it early on, they're much less likely to be able to figure out how to do it once they get into more advanced math.
And like I mentioned, many schools are getting top-of-the-line machines almost every year nowadays, but to do what? When I was in school, they taught you things like typing, basic DOS commands, spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, etc. They're teaching pretty much the exact same thing now, with the exception of Windows instead of DOS. So I ask you: Why do you need hundreds of 3ghz machines in order to type Word documents? The answer is simple. You don't.
It probably doesn't help matters than the technical support in many schools is very poor. Many of these machines are choked to death with adware, worms, viruses, games, and Lord knows what else. As a result, many times they're just pulled off the table, and replaced with another. More machines are purchased because they think newer technology will help them solve these problems. But many of the problems continue to exist because of incompetence of the technical teams.
I participated in the work-study program when I was in high school, and while the computers and school network were much more primitive than it is now, it was still riddled with vulerabilities. Students who knew how to do the simplest of tricks could hide malicious software all over the network, not to mention view teachers files, all because the people in charge apparently had no idea how to secure it. I spent every single day during my work-study time cleaning viruses off of machines, and fixing simple problems which should have been prevented. And the school network was down all the time, and is in just as poor a state this very day, despite the millions of dollars in technology upgrades which should be making these peoples jobs much easier. Computers these days are MUCH more capable of being secured than those in the past, but it just isn't being done.
So this is where the tax dollars go. Computers which are overused/misused and not properly maintained, and overpaid technical staffs who spend most of their time cleaning up after mistakes which they never correct, and just give the excuse of needing "better equipment".
Computers are not the solution to helping children learn better. They're just being used as a babysitter for the lack of good teachers. Good teachers which could be hired, ironically, if not for the huge technology budgets.
I sponsor the literary magazine at my school and we get innumerable submissions dealing with endless love or (on the other side) feelings of betrayal and newfound resolve. Bad, trite, poetry about bad breakups. We also get a few sumbissions with some depth. The big difference we've noted between these two groups of authors is that one group has read widely and the other has not. I'll let you guess which group is which.
We think about this issue of lots of shallow writing and have decided that some of the kids honestly don't know that everything they're saying has been said many times before and better. This phenomenon of believing yourself to be original when you're actually not doesn't confine itself to writing.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Is that most games don't encompass enough to function as more than a sidebar to a chapter. Or even a subchapter.
Strategy games might teach ancient history students that the Romans faced peoples named the Vandals, Goths, Allemanni, etc. But the games probably wouldn't teach much *about* these people.
They'd learn more by reading Tacitus' Germania which isn't very long at all.
There's a place for games, but it's primarily one of emphasizing and illustrating specific points. In some cases, they might raise students' interest. But they aren't good for conveying the density of information that text is good at.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
At least RTFA before issuing your kneejerk reactions, folks. As far as I can tell, this article advocates the use of games for learning processes, not for the development of abstract thought. At no point does the article advocate games use outside of the sciences. Liberal arts were patently excluded. One would think that such avid readers would have better reading comprehension skills.
For instance, his main critique is how entertainment has infiltrated our culture with a focus on trivia rather than substance. No where is this more apparent than a state recalling a governor a year after he had won reelection by a significant number, and that such a governor was run out of office in favor of an ACTOR, who many hope the U.S. Constitution will be amended so he can seek even higher office!
Yes, but by all accounts Gray Davis was doing a horrible job, and it's not like Arnold was an actor who one day woke up and said "Hey I want to be a politician!". He had been a member of the Republican party for quite awhile.
This, despite the number of conservatives who tell Hollywood actors to shut up about politics in the run up to the Iraq war.
What does one have to do with the other? I think the Conservatives bitched the most about actors who were uneducated about the issues getting involved and spreading misinformation.
Politics used to be showbusiness for ugly people, but now its nothing more than an extension of showbusiness.
Politics has always been one part showbusiness, because people have to 'like' you. It's always been like this, regardless of if it's right or wrong. Television just amplified it.
When I read this book, I can see examples that have cropped up in the 1990s that have proven his thesis true. Cell phones is one example. Ever eavesdrop on another person's public cell phonecall? I'm shocked at the trivial minutaie that people discuss with whomever they are speaking to, as if what they are doing at that moment matters to another person.
I'd hate to break this to you, but people were havng the same trivial conversations over land lines I've heard plenty of them.
What we get in a society that always seeks amusement for fear of boredom is a constant barrage of images and distractions that don't really mean anything in the end.
Yes, I think this is a problem but the deeper problem is a society that seeks amusment rather than knowledge. If you want to point to politics, I would state that the rise of ideology based cable news channels (CNN shifting to the left, Fox News on the Right) is more troubling than anything else.
The way we teach our children in schools to study for the multiple guess tests instead of teaching them interconnected facts that build a story, a history, an appreciation for the interconnectedness of our planet.
I'd worry more about social promotion. I don't know what the "fuzzy" statement about the interconnectedness of our planet is, but I worry more about high school students who graduate being able to unable to read, write or do basic math.
So, we end up with people who can pull facts out of their rears to succeed on gameshows like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?", where one question and answer doesn't relate to the next one.
I think it's silly to point to a gameshow as an example of how our children are educated.
No wonder why people can't see a connection between our war in Iraq and our consumption of oil.
This is short sighted too. It's more like 'People can't see a connection between our mideast policy and the consumption of oil'. Even then, the war in Iraq was about a lot more than oil. I know people on the left like to make it out to be some evil crusade for oil, and while controling the region is important the true goals of the Iraq war were to impose democracy in the middle east, and use Iraq as an example of how democracy could work in the middle east. This was a neo-con objective from back around 1992. The second reason was to provide a battle ground in the middle east where terrorist could fight our soldiers rather than our civilians. People who say "ITS ONLY ABOUT OIL" are just as bad as the people who think it has nothing to do with oil.
Postman is right...a society that seeks one entertaining thrill after another cannot survive and e
The Next Big Thing (tm).
Socrates was the Next Big Thing. So was radio. Moving pictures were going to revolutionize the way people taught and learnt. Television was going to irrevocably change the classroom; combined with the telephone, everyone would be able to learn at home, all the time, whatever the wanted. Universities and schools would be obsolete. Until the computers changed everything. It would never be the same after that, until the internet came along. The internet was going to make travel entirely outmoded, as everyone from labourers to scholars communicate and exchange information over the Earth's great Networks. Formalized learning was to have become extinct in this sea of free information.
It is a great relief to hear that it is actually GAMES that will change the world. As I do research at the University of Alberta with the GAMES group (www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games), I am both relieved and vindicated!
My company has a product (MediaLandscape) that converts a MediaSite video presentation into a Flash video presentation. We're working on converting the video from this presentation, especially since one of the people quoted in the article is Preston Austin, our chief architect.
Unfortunately, this was not an anticipated urgent need, so we hadn't begun this process yet, and since a lot of the people who will need to be consulted at other companies won't be back until Monday, it will probably need to wait until then, especially since the server that hosts the video is currently kind of overloaded.
But, if you want to watch the presentation, can more easily do so in Flash instead of its current format, and can wait until Monday, we ought to be able to help you out.
If you drop me a line, I'll send you an URL when the new version is posted. With any luck, however, it will be at the same location as the current presentation of the event, http://acceleratemadison.com/webcasts/index.php.
Glenn Loos-Austin
UI Designer at Epic
http://www.flickr.com/photos/junkchest/
Architects have been uploading house designs into Half-life and Quake because they allow real-time walkthroughs with an easy interface. And they can hide monsters in the closets that customers need to frag.
Some of the leading chewing gum researchers are saying that chewing gum in class is good for concentration. What I'm saying is, self-proclaimed experts with a bias are...self-proclaimed experts with a bias...or something.
For some subjects, it should only be a supplement. Mathematics comes to mind. I've found that teaching mathematics is super easy the old fashioned way. You don't pull any punches and have to be able to field any questions the students have. That means being able to focus in exactly where the student doesn't understand and dismantle the problem appropriately. Knowing algebra to the level of Herstein and Rudin is required. Otherwise, you have no business teaching math.
I focus on math, since it will probably be the first to be replaced by computer instruction for numerous reasons.
Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
I was part of the Wisconsin presentation, No one in their right mind--including myself and my colleagues who gave this presentation--would argue that games are "better" than books (or that books are "better" than games). That is some media "take" on the event we were part of. Games and books are good when used in certain ways and bad when used in other ways. No technology is just "good" or "bad". Technologies are good and bad depending on how they are used and the contexts into which they are placed. My argument is that school textbooks are bad when they are read out of any context of application, use, activity, or real understanding of how the words in the textbook apply to the world. School is full of people who can pass physics tests but can't do any physics. Games can add simulated world experience to what texts say, making texts more useful. And, of course, as I have argued in many places, games--like Pokemon-are replete with higher-order language and reading. Many of the posts on this site are responding to some media hype, not anything any of us would claim. Good video games are an amazing addition to our world--they don't have to be "better" than books to be wonderful and good. James Paul Gee University of Wisconsin-Madison
the pottstown area sucks!
Though it probably helped I was working on code, rather than just rp'ing away, MUSHes kinda take both, because of the RP aspect. It's a book, and a game, kind of.
Having been mostly on Star Wars mushes, I can testify that the plots and ideas presented by players at places such as [shameless plug]Star Wars Uprising MUSH[/shameless plug] were far and away better than most of the novels.