Video games….let’s start paying attention
Oct 19
A colleague of mine sent me this link : Video games can reshape education: U.S. scientists .
The group found many video games require players to master skills in demand by today’s employers.
And here I thought employers were interested in students who could understood dangling particples and quadratic equations.
“This is not an, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ message,” he told CBC Thursday. “It’s, ‘Hey, something’s working here.’”
“Common sense tells us that a medium so basic to the lives of these
‘millennials’ has potential beyond the living room,” Lowenstein said.
“We would be crazy not to seek ways to exploit interactive games to
teach our children.”
But won’t they just be playing “shoot ‘em up games”?
Sawyer cited the simulated worlds of games such as the Civilization
series and Age of Empires as examples of rich, multi-textured games
that require a cognitive style of play versus eye-hand style play of
most sports and action games.
And the most telling statement:
The most significant obstacle to video game learning, he said, is
the parent who doesn’t participate in the “media literacy” of their
children’s interests and often doesn’t see the benefits the games offer.“They have to be more engaged, or they risk their children tuning the good things out,” he said
“Are we ignoring the culture of our youth?” And yes Dustin, you should have blogged this.
technorati tags:videogames