Tag Archives: games

Learning by Playing: Video games in the classroom – NYT

Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom

Gillian Laub for The New York Times

Class Media Nicole Dodson, Dakota Jerome Solbakken and Nadine Clements, students at Quest to Learn, a New York City public school, play a game they designed.

By SARA CORBETT
Published: September 15, 2010
via nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?ref=magazine

This seems more like a short book. 9 pages in total. It’s a great read for a general audience. No deep research insights and a little too much observation, but a good read none-the-less.

I don’t see a future in which all school-based learning is video game-based, but I do see a time at which most homework is. At school, I still see a place for manipulation of objects, information retrieval, and design/development of products to gauge learning.

DICE 2010: “Design Outside the Box” Presentation Videos

Interesting view of the future. Common objects and activities from a gaming perspective. You can hate it or love it, but this is a likely future, at least in some respects.

I particularly like his comment near the very end. He wonders whether this is going to just be a marketers utopia or whether (in addition) it will cause people to try to be better people. You often don’t hear the latter, but I think this is equally important and even more so for educators.

Rules Suppressing Mobile Payment, Games to Be Rewritten

Slipping Into Smartphone-Driven World

Rules Suppressing Mobile Payment, Games to Be Rewritten

By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

Smartphones are intelligent, and South Korean government officials are finally accepting that they shouldn’t be made retarded by the country’s aging Internet regime.

via koreatimes.co.kr

I really hate the first sentence here. What was this writer thinking? It sounds like a 3rd grader introducing the topic, specifically his use of “retarded”.

However, with that said, this is a pretty good article. I think some points are a little off (real name requirements are older than a year), but it’s a nice overview on what’s being done.

Study proves conclusively that violent video game play makes more aggressive kids

Study proves conclusively that violent video game play makes more aggressive kids

Published: Monday, March 1, 2010 – 11:44
in Psychology & Sociology

Iowa State University Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson has made much of his life’s work studying how violent video game play affects youth behavior. And he says a new study he led, analyzing 130 research reports on more than 130,000 subjects worldwide, proves conclusively that exposure to violent video games makes more aggressive, less caring kids — regardless of their age, sex or culture. The study was published today in the March 2010 issue of the Psychological Bulletin, an American Psychological Association journal. It reports that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive thoughts and behavior, and decreased empathy and prosocial behavior in youths.

via esciencenews.com

I’m concerned about the claim that the study “conclusively” proves this connection. I’d like to see the published study to see how their variables were accounted for. However, the finding passes the sniff test in my opinion. It makes sense, but I wonder how confounding variables were accounted for in these studies: cartoons, movies, home life, community, and so forth.

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