6/06/2005
Fun And Computer Games Make For Smarter Children
By Jim McClellan in LondonJune 4, 2005
Arguing that pop culture is not dumbing us down but making us more intelligent is guaranteed to generate media buzz. In the United States, Everything Bad is Good for You, the new book by the American pop science writer, Steven Johnson, has sparked a flurry of comment, much of it centred on his claims about the beneficial effects of watching reality TV and The Sopranos.
Much attention has focused more on Johnson's observations that computer games require concentration, forward planning, lateral thinking and sustained problem solving and, as such, offer a cognitive workout that can benefit overall mental development.
In the past few years academics, teachers and software developers have experimented with different ways to harness the cognitive innovations of games in more directed ways.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Education Arcade project has played a leading role, along with James Paul Gee, author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.
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Gee argues that the best games offer a model learning experience and suggests teachers can learn useful lessons by looking at how games draw players in and motivate them to concentrate and tackle complex problems.
"Academic areas, like biology or history, are themselves like games," Gee says. "Scientists act and interact in terms of certain identities and values and use knowledge and information to accomplish certain sorts of goals. So learning science should be about learning how to 'play the game' of science."
He is critical of "skill and drill" teaching, which focuses on lists of facts and repetitive testing.
As Johnson says, "the great opportunity is to do simulations that take Sim City, Age of Empires and Civilisation but use real information about what did happen … and let people play out alternate versions of history."
Jane Healy, an educational psychologist and author of Failure to Connect: how computers affect our children's minds - for better and worse, says games need to be used well to be effective.
She says children need to be supervised by an adult who understands learning and games and can encourage them to reflect on what they are doing when they play. This can sometimes take more of a teacher's time than a standard lesson, she says.
Johnson agrees and says schools need to urgently work out how to use games and their cognitive benefits.
"What's our children's working environment going to be like in the future?
"Will it look like their gaming life, where they're checking five emails while having a conversation, while moving through these virtual worlds, or is it going to look like reading a book?
"If we're going to train kids for that future, we probably need environments that are going to reflect what it's really going to be like."
Arguing that pop culture is not dumbing us down but making us more intelligent is guaranteed to generate media buzz. In the United States, Everything Bad is Good for You, the new book by the American pop science writer, Steven Johnson, has sparked a flurry of comment, much of it centred on his claims about the beneficial effects of watching reality TV and The Sopranos.
Much attention has focused more on Johnson's observations that computer games require concentration, forward planning, lateral thinking and sustained problem solving and, as such, offer a cognitive workout that can benefit overall mental development.
In the past few years academics, teachers and software developers have experimented with different ways to harness the cognitive innovations of games in more directed ways.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Education Arcade project has played a leading role, along with James Paul Gee, author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.
AdvertisementAdvertisement
Gee argues that the best games offer a model learning experience and suggests teachers can learn useful lessons by looking at how games draw players in and motivate them to concentrate and tackle complex problems.
"Academic areas, like biology or history, are themselves like games," Gee says. "Scientists act and interact in terms of certain identities and values and use knowledge and information to accomplish certain sorts of goals. So learning science should be about learning how to 'play the game' of science."
He is critical of "skill and drill" teaching, which focuses on lists of facts and repetitive testing.
As Johnson says, "the great opportunity is to do simulations that take Sim City, Age of Empires and Civilisation but use real information about what did happen … and let people play out alternate versions of history."
Jane Healy, an educational psychologist and author of Failure to Connect: how computers affect our children's minds - for better and worse, says games need to be used well to be effective.
She says children need to be supervised by an adult who understands learning and games and can encourage them to reflect on what they are doing when they play. This can sometimes take more of a teacher's time than a standard lesson, she says.
Johnson agrees and says schools need to urgently work out how to use games and their cognitive benefits.
"What's our children's working environment going to be like in the future?
"Will it look like their gaming life, where they're checking five emails while having a conversation, while moving through these virtual worlds, or is it going to look like reading a book?
"If we're going to train kids for that future, we probably need environments that are going to reflect what it's really going to be like."
