Internet Games
A Learning Tool or a Waste of Time?
Dateline: August 29, 2003
By Ann Zeise
You bought a computer and Internet service in hopes that your
son or daughter would spend time on it in educational pursuits.
Instead all they seem to do is play games! They've long outgrown
Reader Rabbit and now they are playing games online with dubious,
violent plots, and with people all over the world, not all who
use "polite" language. You are considering that maybe
you should ban computer use for gaming, but your teen is getting
their studying done. What can you do? Can you rationalize Internet
gaming as educational?
In May, research came out from the University of Toronto that
claimed that kids who played video games had better visual acuity
and reaction time than kids that do not. They could react to
things faster on computer monitors. The next step, of course,
will be to see if these skills make kids better drivers or soccer
players.
What is the lure of these games? They aren't easy to learn.
Each has a culture that expects a certain set of attitudes and
a culture of what constitutes fair play. The rules must be figured
out. It takes the anthropological skill of Margaret Meade to
figure these out! Each game has goals, constraints, and consequences:
a subset of real life, spiked with the elements of human imagination.
A new player is expected to figure out the causal relationships
between the population and the elements in this imaginary world,
and figure out how his character can survive to reach the goal.
This element of impending doom creates the excitement that isn't
found in "educational" games.
There is a geeky social aspect to the Internet games. My son
has kept in touch with a Danish Boy Scout he met at a Jamboree.
It seems his school in Denmark has no problem allowing Internet
games in the morning when it is late at night in California.
I get bombarded with questions about where world cities are,
as Scott makes friends all over the world.
As the basics of the games are mastered, it then becomes a
challenge to create new "worlds" with the programming
tools issued by the game's manufacturer. Players who create popular
"maps" gain status. The equivalent of being 'mayor'
is to be a game admin. The Admin gets to rule the players, trying
to determine who may be using a "hack" to give them
too many lives or too much power. Does this resemble modern political
life to any one else?
What motivates your child to play endless Internet games?
It may be they enjoy the escape into fantasy when the problems
of life seem to be too much. For some it will be the need to
show their prowess, as often those with a physical handicap have
no problem beating the physically able in these worlds. The games
are especially appealing during the "social hour:"
Observe the bonding going on. Many love the mental exercise of
the games after a tedious day. The players acknowledge good moves
on the part of each other, confirming self-worth.
Ever read one of those job descriptions that require that
one be able to juggle many tasks at once? Gamers must deal with
multiple sets of information and still they seem not to be mentally
overloaded. A well-constructed game will also have some kind
of built-in coach-mentor making suggestions, such as "You
are running out of gas."
Homeschoolers are often taken to task about socialization.
In multi-user, international games, kids learn to deal with and
negotiate with and plan strategies with team members of many
cultures. In many of the games, rogue players cannot win. With
the growth of the world market, the odds are good our children's
co-workers will be half a world away. Interdependency among team
members makes the game's goals achievable.
Tons of money is being poured into Internet and console games
compared to what is spent on "educational" software.
This is why the deliberately educational games do not hold a
child's attention very long. It is worth searching through the
Internet games for those that mesh with your family values. Kids
will never know you slipped them something 'educational.' For
a balanced life, establish limits, but do not worry that your
child is not learning anything useful when playing Internet games.
Ref: Not Just Fun and Games, Internet Games as a Training Medium,
by J.J. Kasavi, Helsinki University of Technology.
Computer & Video Games
Not just games for most computers and systems, but also strategies
and hints, game guides and ratings, and terminology.
Getting It Wrong: Slaying Myths About Video Games
What is most tantalizing to those of us in the Serious Games movement is the idea that we could instill the kind of fanatical devotion and concentration that games like WoW do, but do it with instructional content rather than just dragon slaying. Not that there's anything wrong with slaying a few dragons once in a while.
If you give a kid a Nintendo
So, what to expect when you give a kid a Nintendo? Expect imagination
and interest and excitement and passion. Expect a virtual unit
study, disguised in a video game box. But please don't tell your
child he's been practicing reading, writing, spelling and math.
By Mary Gold.
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