Computer Games Actually Good For Kids
polycounter lvl 18
Games don't just make crazy loners kill people, they can be positive too!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7635404.stm
Hooray, playing Brain Training on the DS for 20 minutes before school lessons makes kids score better on tests!
Future generations will be cleverer if we make learning fun.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7635404.stm
Hooray, playing Brain Training on the DS for 20 minutes before school lessons makes kids score better on tests!
Future generations will be cleverer if we make learning fun.
Replies
IMO, this still misses the point however. games are fun because they're learning. games, and not just puzzle games, teach all sorts of complex cognitive (and otherwise) thought patterns.
a lot of my ability for logic and reasoning, and grappling with abstract things, as well as multitasking and keeping multiple issues in my mind at once comes from video games where you shoot people. while i don't like violence, i dont think the value in games is just in the-ones-that-teach-you-math...
but this stuff is great for spreading awareness. hoo-ray.
honestly. who gives a shit about a kid's ability to crunch numbers? isn't rational and spacial organization skills, as well as morality issues or reflexes, ooorr logic patterns more important that fucking math skills?
what about creativity being developed by exploring all of these different worlds that we're creating?
I recommend you read "Innumeracy" by John Allen Paulos, it covers a lot of the everyday situations where regular people without much math skill can hugely misjudge situations due to not really understanding the math (statistics, probability, volume, size, price) behind very common principles.
It's not really just about "crunching numbers" though, Brain Training on the DS has word puzzles too, and the new "More Training" version has logic puzzles and other games as well.
But yeah. I'd much rather have gone through a quick-fire quiz trying to beat a high score on maths questions rather than slavishly copying stuff out of textbooks, that was just boring and I hardly remember any of it. You learn quicker through practical use and repetition... old-style textbook learning just doesn't deliver that.
my point isn't to say that there is no value in math skills at all. i suppose i'm deconstructing this article because it's my opinion here that math skills are being labeled as far too important than they are. like -- video games are useless untill we realize they help kids with math?? that's pretty crazy simple minded. one value. math. do video games help? no? well fuck em.
we're very myopic in our focus in our education system. we value things that tend to be easily quantifiable and testable. human learning is faaaaaaaaarrr more complex than that. games are education in their nature, even when you're shooting aliens. (violence is a different topic)
i'm interested in this stuff you reference. i'd assumme that one would learn these skills outside of a math class, but i'd like to know more. i would assume i have a pretty decent intuitive understanding of probability, but i've never looked at it. volume, size.. price... these are things that get learned in a marketplace picking fruit. i dont need mr. bumpkinson to tell me that a slightly large mellon at the same price is a better deal than the small one, unless-some-other-situation-etc. am i misunderstanding the point?
http://ces-verlag.de/
And seeing that, eventhough their product has decent quality, is well made, got great reviews, proper content, it is not a market with "tons of money to make". It simply isn't. At least not in Germany. The majority of parents / adults sadly are extremely resistant to this kind of "change". And that isn't far-fetched, with the whole "games are art" / "violent games leading in sales" / "game addiction" ... being a general public opinion. We just havent had enough years of "good" games in there yet that would be of value outside of the gamers scene. Those "braintrainers" on the DS are surely a good step in the right direction, but I also remember parents playing Tetris on the gameboy years ago and things havent changed dramatically... it will take more years, think in terms of generations...
there is also the issue of games teaching things "unreflected", which is more like "conditioning" in animal experiments
nevertheless I do agree if done "reasonable" it would be good, the problem is that a certain degree of "quality" just like in most games would be sacrificed for costs, and then you end up with "rubbish edugames" ruining everything again. And boy there are so many bad ones, simply as the market is tiny... and why is the market because of public opinion and "bad examples"
and to a degree I think with kids being exposed to "other" forms (games,media...) to a much higher degree than we were, there will be a "demand" to adopt new ways of teaching to the things children interact with. However again here its unsure whether that is good "everything being faster / stimulus based / flashy" or whether that doesnt make children the total media junkies of the future that cannot rest anymore. (My Dad was a teacher and my sister is hehe)
I remember growing up with a whole bunch of different education computer games. And we're talking early to mid 90's. Sure, they can do more with them now, but they can do more now with every type of game. I'm not knocking them at all, I think educational games are amazing and I still remember and treasure many of these games I played as a kid. My point is, does no one remember them? I think they should be looked at and studied for what they did and didn't do well before developers continue on with making different types of learning games.
I agree with your point, John_Warner, but at the same time, I see the other point. Yes, there are things to be learned from all types of different interaction in games. Which is why these puzzle and math games are also important, so there is more variety to what can be learned from interaction in video games. Also, the stuff that gets taught in education games is most directly helpful to school and tests, which is key to parents. Whether or not there are more important skills to be learned isn't the point, it's what parents can get for their kids that make them feel best about.
p.s. Speaking of old educational games and their nostalgia... anybody remember some good ones? I remember, let's see... Reading Rabbit, Treasure Mountain, Oregon Trail (sorta education, isn't it?), Island of Dr. Brain, and uhh... well, I know there were more, but these are what come to mind.
well the more i play the more i learn...about how to pulloff a no-scope headshot.... lol
btw: srry for bringing up an old topic. =S
Possibly... I mainly mention this because every single day, humans (consciously or not) evaluate risk, probability, tons of other things which are deeply rooted in mathematics, often without even thinking about it.
One of the points the book makes is that while a lot of people think they understand probability, when they are actually put on the spot for it, or challenged with various logic/probability puzzles which aren't even that complex, they will jump to a conclusion that is usually wrong, based on incorrect evaluation of the situation.
There is a lot of stuff in that book which I thought I knew fairly well, but on actually reading proper examples of it, it's quite surprising how often statistics can be very misleading, especially in the media. It really helps to be able to interpret these correctly, or at least draw meaningful conclusions from figures which may make no sense initially.