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Really Good News About Your Children’s Video Games
Really Good News About Your Children’s Video Games
Research published by University of Rochester neuroscientists C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier has grabbed national attention for suggesting that playing “action” video and computer games has positive effects – enhancing student’s visual selective attention. But that finding is just one small part of a more important message that all parents and educators need to hear: video games are not the enemy, but the best opportunity we have to engage our kids in real learning.
Any observer knows that the attitude of today’s children to video and computer games is the very opposite of the attitude that most of them have toward school. The amount of time they spend playing computer and video games – estimated at 10,000 hours by the time they are twenty-one, often in multi-hour bursts – belies the “short attention span” criticism of educators. And while years ago the group attracted to video and computer games was almost entirely adolescent boys, it is now increasingly girls and all children of all ages and social groups. One would be hard-pressed today to find a kid in America who doesn’t play computer or video games of one sort or another.
The evidence is quickly mounting that our “Digital Native” children’s brains are changing to accommodate these new technologies with which they spend so much time. Not only are they better at spreading their attention over a wide range of events, as Green and Bavelier report, but they are better at parallel processing, taking in information more quickly (at “twitchspeed”), understanding multimedia, and collaborating over networks.
What attracts and “glues” kids to today’s video and computer games is neither the violence, or even the surface subject matter, but rather the learning the games provide. Kids, like and all humans, love to learn when it isn’t forced on them. Modern computer and video games provide learning opportunities every second, or fraction thereof.
On the surface, kids learn to do things – to fly airplanes, to drive fast cars, to be theme park operators, war fighters, civilization builders and veterinarians. But on deeper levels they learn infinitely more: to take in information from many sources and make decisions quickly; to deduce a game’s rules from playing rather than by being told; to create strategies for overcoming obstacles; to understand complex systems through experimentation. And, increasingly, they learn to collaborate with others. Many adults are not aware that games have long ago passed out of the single-player isolation shell imposed by lack of networking, and have gone back to being the social medium they have always been – on a worldwide scale. Massively Multiplayer games such as EverQuest now have hundreds of thousands of people playing simultaneously, collaborating nightly in clans and guilds.
Today’s game-playing kid enters the first grade able to do and understand so many complex things – from building, to flying, to reasoning – that the curriculum they are given feel like they are being handed depressants. And it gets worse as the students progress. Their “Digital Immigrant” teachers know so little about the digital world of their charges – from online gaming to exchanging, sharing, meeting, evaluating, coordinating, programming, searching, customizing and socializing, that it is often impossible for them to design learning in the language and speed their students need and relish, despite their best efforts.
An emerging coalition of academics, writers, foundations, game designers, companies like Microsoft and, increasingly, the U.S. Military is working to make parents and educators aware of the enormous potential for learning contained in the gaming medium. While “edutainment,” may work for pre-schoolers, it is primitive when it comes to the enormous sophistication of today’s games. We need new and better learning games, and these are finally beginning to appear. Microsoft has sponsored a “Games-to-Teach” project at MIT which is building games for learning difficult concepts in physics and environmental science on the X-Box and Pocket PC. Lucas Games has lesson plans to help teachers integrate its games into curricula to teach critical thinking. A UK study by TEEM (Teachers Evaluating Educational Multimedia) has shown that certain games can help youngsters to learn logical thinking and computer literacy. Given the almost perfect overlap between the profiles of gamers and military recruits, the US Military uses over 50 different video and computer games to teach everything from doctrine, to strategy and tactics. “America’s Army, Operations,” a recruiting game released for free in 2002, now has almost 2 million registered users, with almost a million having completed virtual basic training.
Academic research into the positive effects of games on learning, which not so long ago sat unread on the shelf, is being noticed by national media. Theoretical and practical guides such as “What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy” by Professor of Education James Paul Gee, and my own “Digital Game-Based Learning,” are now on bookshelves. Experts, such as former Stanford CFO William Massey, who created the learning game “Virtual U.” are working with game designers to build games that communicate their knowledge and experience. Foundations like Sloan, Markle and others are funding these efforts. The Woodrow Wilson school has begun a project called “Serious Games” to increase the use of gaming in public policy debates, picking up an effort that begin 10 years ago with “Sim Health” from Maxis.
Yet despite all the findings, research, and cries for help from the kids in school, many parents and educators still tend to think of video and computer games as frivolous at best and harmful at worst. The press often encourages this with headlines about “killing games” when in fact two thirds of the games are rated “E (everybody),” and sixteen of the top 20 sellers are rated either “E” or “T (teen)”. To counteract this “name prejudice,” users and funders of today’s “new” educational games often refer to them by “code” names, such as “Desktop Simulators,” “Synthetic Environments,” or “Immersive Interactive Experiences.”
Yet what these new, highly effective learning tools really are a combination of the most compelling and interactive design elements of the best video and computer games with specific curricular content. The tricky part is doing this in ways that capture, rather than lose, the learner’s interest and attention. We are now becoming much better at this. The money and will is there to do it, and our students are crying for it.
Computer Courses: Do We Really Need Them?
Computer Courses: Do We Really Need Them?
For Seniors This Does Compute
Probably the most prevalent, and perhaps least costly of any training anywhere are computer courses. In fact, computer courses are about the most important courses offered, as they provide skills needed for personal as well as business acumen.
Community colleges, senior centers, community centers, non-profit organizations, high schools, colleges, universities and private for-profit firms all offer computer courses. Many retails and office supply stores, as well as e-merchants, offer computer courses by e-book, POD (print on demand), Web-based training and CD or DVD.
For seniors especially the choice in computer courses is diverse, plentiful and generally low cost. One of the perks of growing old is the right to become part of what is fast becoming a commonplace college affiliated organization – Creative Retirement centers. These are typically cropping up on the campuses of community colleges and state universities and offer computer courses, discounts on standard college courses, senior computer centers, events, trips and get togethers such as meetings, dances and dinners.
The impetus behind these creative retirement facilities and organizations and their computer centers and computer courses was the University of North Carolina and its Asheville campus. The home of the Center for Creative Retirement, UNC Ashville each Memorial Weekend hosts a weekend get-together for seniors or about-to-be-retirees, with a look at the various facilities and housing available locally, the various courses including computer courses offered at the UNC campus club, and a tour of the local area.
The College for Seniors is a program of the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, established in 1988. With full access to the resources of the University of North Carolina at Asheville, College for Seniors members keep mentally and physically fit through participation in classes and possibly even teaching a class or two.
College for Seniors draws from members’ experiences and professional expertise as well as from the UNCA faculty to offer four terms each year. Courses range from Chaucer to computers, foreign affairs to opera, yoga to history. Held on the UNCA campus and at community locations, courses are non-credit, with no tests or grades, open to all interested adults. Members collaborate with staff to teach, learn, design curricula and arrange special events. Educational travel opportunities are available. Term-renewable registration entitles members to as many courses as schedules permit.
All College for Seniors students are required to be members of the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement. This membership allows participation in all Center for Creative Retirement programs and provides a UNCA parking permit, a UNCA identification card, and UNCA library privileges. There are no age limits for College for Seniors courses or Center for Creative Retirement membership.
Examples of computer courses offered as part of College for Seniors include a basic Getting Started with Computers course, Advanced Home Computer, Basic e-mail and Internet access, MS Word training, Excel Spreadsheet basics, and Power Point basics. The only prerequisites for the more advanced of these computer courses are knowledge of the keyboard and mouse, and comfort with the use of both. A basic knowledge of either Windows or Macintosh jargon and menu bar items such as filing, editing, viewing and inserting functions. You should also know commands such as copying, cutting and pasting, and standard and formatting toolbars.
For the beginning computer courses, you don’t even need these rudimentary understandings, though. The computer starter course assumed you’ve never used a computer before, and teaches the senior student how to navigate around the Internet, and how to conduct searches. Windows applications are taught as well in these basic courses. Here the retirees learn how to use word processing to save files, and to create folders. They also learn the basics of sending and receiving e-mail.