Tag Archives: videogame

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.

Students learn English using virtual reality

Media_httpwwwkoreatim_abbce
via koreatimes.co.kr

I have to say that this is nothing really new conceptually. This is essentially the interactions that have been taking place is SecondLife for years. The interface is different though. This is likely using something similar to Playstations video or Microsoft Kinect.

The latter is probably the one that will have the most impact on a project like this. Kinect (with the Xbox) will make interfaces like this much easier for developers to integrate into their software.

From the article, I can’t tell what the role of the guy in the picture is. Does this software require a real life dialog partner? That could be cool for practicing more realistic dialogs between language learners, even without the teacher. Otherwise, I’m wondering what the purpose really is. Having smart bots engage and respond would be much better overall.

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.

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.

%d bloggers like this: