Video games are a fact of almost every family’s existence. Children come home from school and glue themselves to the computer or game console to neglect their homework. Numerous conversations between parents and children take place about how video games are bad. Parents also commiserate with one another over the time their children spend playing video games. Video games regularly lure our children away from their homework. They cause children to stay up too late, making them tired and sluggish in the classroom. Yet it is almost impossible to stop children from their incessant play.
Children can consistently outplay adults in video games. They have better coordination and cognitive skills in the games than the adults who play with them. Parents want their children to spend less time on video games. However, it is a struggle to get children to do their homework. Video games manage to keep a student’s interest while homework does not. Parents want to know that something their children are doing is of benefit.
Research in this area is fairly recent, the last twenty years have contributed little research; however there is a wave of studies in the last seven years that show good skills being developed by video games.
James Gee, in his book, “What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy,
found that “challenge and learning are a large part of what makes good video games motivating and entertaining.” (Gee, 2005, p. 34) Some skills are physical and some are mental. Gee goes on to equate learning a subject with learning a game. Just as gamers figure out the rules of a game, students figure out the rules of a subject such as science. As they learn the rules, they also memorize facts. Thus, he makes the proposition that learning in the classroom can be equated to game play. (Gee, 2005).
The players also learn about the real world by what they see and interact with in the simulated background of the game. Players learn how to read maps, recognize landforms and how the earth is organized. They also learn how to interact using the physical laws of the world and interact in historical settings. (Hutchison 2007) Plants and animal life that is characteristic to each ecosystem is depicted in the best of games. In the game, Civilization, players learn which animals need plants and which ones are carnivorous. They also learn where the best places are to build a town or find valuable resources such as gold. Games are designed experiences for the player. (Squire, 2006) This furthers the notion that children can learn about the world around them from a video game, especially the ones who live in poverty stricken areas. Children learn from acting out the part and living in the virtual world. (Squire, 2006)
One study that focused solely on how video game playing children display the seven common characteristics of an expert. These characteristics are:
1. Experts excel mainly in their own domains.
2. Experts perceive large meaningful patterns in their domains.
3. Experts are fast and quickly solve problems with little error.
4. Experts have superior short-term and long-term memory.
5. Experts see and represent problems in their domain at a deeper, more principled level than novices, who represent problems at a superficial level.
6. Experts spend a great deal of time analyzing problems qualitatively.
7. Experts have strong self-monitoring skills.
In fact, they found that children made decisions within seconds about what to do in the game while weighing pertinent information about the outcome of the task and the length of time to perform the operation when a time limit was involved. (VanDeventer, & White 2002)
One observation was of a child watching two screens simultaneously, his position and that of his opponent’s. The better video game players consistently demonstrated expert behaviors more often than their less experienced counterparts.
Cortese in his research says that the most effective learning took place not in the training classroom but in the workplace and that small groups seem to be the most effective. (Cortese 2005) One can easily equate video games to this scenario. A group of people playing a game has the ability to text each other. They communicate about how to get past a monster or through a portal onto a new level. Others seeing these texted conversations, add in their strategies. Learning how to filter information and make use of what will work is used constantly in game play.
Social interactions were studied by Jorge Pena and Jeffrey Hancock. The text messages of a game was found to be either as social communication or task communication.
They went on to find that the more experienced players tended to use more specialized language to communicate than less experienced players.
it was also found that trial and error and advice from friends are the preferred methods to learn rather than reading the rules.
Total Enterprise Simulations are also similar to a group or clan playing a video game. The group has a stake in the successful outcome for all. A clan is interested in all of its members working together to be successful against another clan on the virtual battlefield. The study by Washbush and Gosen, found that in 10 different data sets with subjects (n=33<286); learning occurred in all of them. They went on to explain that learning and performance were not related. (Washbush & Gosen 2001) So no matter if a team lost, there was still learning.
Video games are a fact of almost every family’s existence. Children come home from school and glue themselves to the computer or game console to neglect their homework. Parents often think of how much time their children spend playing video games. Video games regularly lure our children away from their homework. They cause children to stay up too late, making them tired and sluggish in the classroom. Yet it is almost impossible to stop children from their non stop play.
How children view school is very important in light of the popularity of video games. It was found that children preferred child initiated activities such as: recess, computers, center activities, games and puzzles. It was also noted that homework and test taking were the least favorite activities. From this we can go on to see how children will like learning through games more than homework. children who play games learn the rules which transfer to learning the rules of life. Children then become the expert, or teacher. When one is in a group situation while also acting as the teacher, there is much learning that goes on.
-Monica Slikker-
