We've all been there. Frustrated, heated over the fact that we can't figure this problem out. We've worked on it for hours, tried every different way we could think of, asked our friends and parents to no avail. Then it clicked, finally it hit us as we were giving up just how to do it right. Most everyone agrees that these are learning experiences more powerful than something that just makes sense to us right away. And it is these kind of situations that can occur not only in the educational world but in the virtual world as well. Video games have long been considered evil by parents and educators alike. As I've talked about before parents often lay blame on video games for causing their children to think more violently or act more aggressively.
Here at Miami there is constantly a cry out to get students to think more critically and in my experience my ability to think critically has been substantially more influenced by playing video games than my schooling. Our education system needs some sort of reform, I went to a high school that was rated as one of the best in Ohio and yet I don't feel like I was ever challenged to critically think. My classes were filled with memorization of facts and formulas that I would need to be able to regurgitate later. Filled with multiple choice tests when I think we all realize the real world will not be so kind with only four options. The free reign offered in video games to solve problems can be educationally beneficial.
Rebecca Haag Guyne in her article titled "The Educational Benefits of Video Games." talks about how video games can impact the youth and the possibility that educators may begin to look towards the virtual world. Often the youth are found trying to beat a difficult challenge in a video game for hours but if for school work they often give up. She speaks of an intrinsic motivation to beat the game that should be capitalized in the school. The concept of learning from your mistakes is also something that has been lost in our current educational system. When someone fails a test or misses a question there is no second effort, generally just worry about the affect that will have on their GPA and future in the academic world. In the virtual world when someone fails there is opportunity to try again immediately. There is immense value in being able to learn what you did wrong and fix that problem, and this is something that our current system does not offer often.
Video games need to stop being addressed as this compulsive evil that is ruining the lives of the youth and rather as something that can enrich their learning experience. There have been hundreds of studies claiming that video games in the classroom is something that needs to be pursued yet our society fails to implement. Possibly it comes from our fear of admitting that we are wrong and the realization that we can change our system, that we have infinite attempts to make our educational system right. Maybe we could all learn from the virtual world.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
What class is Professor Ninteno teaching?
Video games have always been a facet of entertainment that the youth of our nation have adored since the late 1980's. Nowadays, the video game industry accounted for 9.7 billion dollars in 2007, with tournaments across the nation for different games and even some "gamers" that are being sponsored by companies to compete. They have developed from games with minimal objects and space, simplistic designs and lack of a storyline to epic tales with life-like graphics and systems that cost as much as $300 dollars retail.
Video games have also expanded into the older age group. If you were to walk into any college residence hall across the nation you'd be sure to find a video game system in nearly every room, especially those that men reside in.
What our society is now beginning to study is the worth of all of these games. Are they a benefit to our youth or are they detriment. There have been lawsuits against video game companies because they drove a young man to commit a crime and followed the directions that one of his mission was in the virtual world. Are video games to blame for these actions of violence? Andrea Norcia looked into the studies that have been done in her story,
http://www.pamf.org/preteen/parents/videogames.html
The study suggests that those that are playing video games that are violent for extensive periods of time are more aggressive and more likely confront their teachers about certain objects. I don't think that a young man playing Grand Theft Auto for an extended period of time changes his actions in school, I think its much more likely for a young man to already be rather aggressive and ask for these types of video games to play. I think that yes, violent video games can desensitize people to the violence in our culture but no more than movies with our favorite actors committing crime or TV shows about acts of violence. Blaming video games for the youth's rise in violent crime portrays a severe lack of responsibility in our nation, a severe lack of responsibility that has been around for ages but is shown recently in these studies. It is the responsibility of those making video games to create games that people will buy, nothing more nothing less. They have to make money to put food on the table for their family and if people are willing to buy violent video games for their children, someone wil make them. It is the responsibility of the parents to make sure that their son or daughter is not being morally changed by the virtual world, not the producer of the video game. Video games hold great potential in the learning of America, but only if we stop blaming them for destroying our children first, after all, usually it is the parents buying these games for their children.
Video games have also expanded into the older age group. If you were to walk into any college residence hall across the nation you'd be sure to find a video game system in nearly every room, especially those that men reside in.
What our society is now beginning to study is the worth of all of these games. Are they a benefit to our youth or are they detriment. There have been lawsuits against video game companies because they drove a young man to commit a crime and followed the directions that one of his mission was in the virtual world. Are video games to blame for these actions of violence? Andrea Norcia looked into the studies that have been done in her story,
http://www.pamf.org/preteen/parents/videogames.html
The study suggests that those that are playing video games that are violent for extensive periods of time are more aggressive and more likely confront their teachers about certain objects. I don't think that a young man playing Grand Theft Auto for an extended period of time changes his actions in school, I think its much more likely for a young man to already be rather aggressive and ask for these types of video games to play. I think that yes, violent video games can desensitize people to the violence in our culture but no more than movies with our favorite actors committing crime or TV shows about acts of violence. Blaming video games for the youth's rise in violent crime portrays a severe lack of responsibility in our nation, a severe lack of responsibility that has been around for ages but is shown recently in these studies. It is the responsibility of those making video games to create games that people will buy, nothing more nothing less. They have to make money to put food on the table for their family and if people are willing to buy violent video games for their children, someone wil make them. It is the responsibility of the parents to make sure that their son or daughter is not being morally changed by the virtual world, not the producer of the video game. Video games hold great potential in the learning of America, but only if we stop blaming them for destroying our children first, after all, usually it is the parents buying these games for their children.
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