Importance of Video Games in Learning and Literacy

Posted: July 10th, 2003 | 1 Comment »

I do not consider myself as a gamer anymore, but I happen to think that games of my teenage years like La Hanse, Player Manager (kick-off extension), or even Bubble Bubble (played in pairs) or later Civilization or Sim City were great educators. James Paul Gee goes deeper and shows the world the importance of games video games. A few quotes:

  • Games make kids smarter when they play them proactively, that is, when they think about game design, how their own styles of play interact with that design, how different strategies work, and how games relate to other things like books, movies, and the world. Schools may not yet care about this, but modern workplaces care about whether people can think about how their environments are designed and can be re-designed to be better and more productive.
  • It dawned on me that good games were learning machines. Built into their very designs were good learning principles, principles supported, in fact, by cutting-edge research in cognitive science, the science that studies human thinking and learning. Many of these principles could be used in schools to get kids to learn things like science, but, too often today schools are returning to skill-and-drill and multiple-choice tests that kill deep learning
  • Humans are terrible at learning when you give them lots and lots of verbal information ahead of time out of any context where it can be applied. Games give verbal information “just in time” when and where it can be used and “on demand” as the player realizes he or she needs it.
  • What makes a game is an interactive world that the player partly creates through his or her actions and decisions. Also, people are too hung up about learning “content” in the sense of facts. What we need people to learn is how to think deeply about complex systems (e.g., modern workplaces, the environment, international relations, social interactions, cultures, etc.) where everything interacts in complicated ways with everything else and bad decisions can make for disasters.

    • One Comment on “Importance of Video Games in Learning and Literacy”

    1. 1 Nolan said at 8:39 pm on September 19th, 2005:

      I totally agreee w/ you, I am doing an opinion statment on this subject and i would like to know other info asap if possible. (due this wednesday)
      THX
      Rocco