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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.)"
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.
"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 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
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
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
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
Nethack?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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