What can happen when parents embrace a child's interest?

Penn Jillette Is Tired Of The Video Game Bulls***, an article at game informer dot com.

Lyla Wolfenstein brought this link to unschoolers' attention, and though it's not about unschoolers, the stories are interesting and the angle on the games is different.

"...They were using the scientific method. They'd think of a hypothesis—This boss is really susceptible to fire spells—and then collect evidence to see if the hypothesis was correct. If it wasn't, they'd improve it until it accounted for the observed data.

This led Steinkuehler to a fascinating and provocative conclusion: Videogames are becoming the new hotbed of scientific thinking for kids today.
Read More

"Video games are hard,'' said Eric Klopfer, the director of MIT's Education Arcade, which studies and develops educational video games. "People don't like to play easy games, and games have figured out a way to encourage players to persist at solving challenging problems.''

The games aren't just hard - they're adaptively hard. They tend to challenge people right at the edge of their abilities; as players get better and score more points, they move up to more demanding levels of play. This adaptive challenge is "stunningly powerful'' for learning, said John Gabrieli, a neuroscientist at MIT.

Got a son who plays video games all day long? He just might grow up to be a video game designer! That's exactly what happened to my brother, Greg Wondra, now a video game designer with Zindagi Games. That's him above -- with Derek Jeter, cover athlete for 2K7 Major League Baseball. I talked to Greg about life as a video game designer:

chat transcript with links and photos, including a larger image of Michelle at Blizzcon, shown at right:

The door closes with a squeak and a creak. Oh no! Is it locked? Let’s check… No, thank God, you can open it… So now, another go at getting to the ladder. Maybe through this narrow hallway? … No, it’s a dead end"...

Quotes *me*!: https://zajosa.blogspot.com/2008/04/problem-when-parents-think-childs.html "The Problem and a Solution," by Zach Sanders

Joyce

"Okay, if you have been living under a rock or something, you may not know that the long-awaited Super Smash Bros.' Brawl for the Wii was released Saturday night at midnight. In this house, it was an Event. Gamestops across the country sponsored tournaments. I signed the boys up for the tournament near us last week, and there was only one other name on the list at the local Gamestop. A tournament of three, I thought. This should go quickly... read more (and there's a link to the game's site there)

Portal

Linda Wyatt wrote:

"One of my kids sent me a link to a game he is interested in. "I hadn't heard of it before, but it looks VERY cool, and since I was right there on your site at the time, I wondered if your kids play it. And if they don't, they might want to know about it.

"http://orange.half-life2.com/portal.html
Be sure to watch the trailer. "

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BRAIN CANDY: Is pop culture dumbing us down or smartening us up? It's about TV and video games both, and has some excellent point, well stated, that you can take to the relatives. "How can the greater cognitive demands that television makes on us now, he wonders, not matter?

Johnson develops the same argument about video games. Most of the people who denounce video games, he says, haven’t actually played them..." You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired! This quote from the article sounds just like unschooling:

Gaming tends to be regarded as a harmless diversion at best, a vile corruptor of youth at worst. But the usual critiques fail to recognize its potential for experiential learning. Unlike education acquired through textbooks, lectures, and classroom instruction, what takes place in massively multiplayer online games is what we call accidental learning. It's learning to be - a natural byproduct of adjusting to a new culture - as opposed to learning about.

Marc Prensky (link supplied by Bob Collier; thanks!)
"Marc's new book, "DON'T BOTHER ME, MOM—I'M LEARNING" : How Computer and Video Games Are Preparing Your Kids For Twenty-first Century Success—and How You Can Help! ....."

Proposed Video-Game School Gets $1.1 Million Boost

The MacArthur Foundation board announced Thursday it will fund a $1.1 million grant for a brand new middle- and high school in New York. The curriculum revolves around teaching kids to make video games.

The MacArthur Foundation says video games and the dynamic systems they use will be key to information management in the future.

Heather Chaplin reports on the new idea of gaming literacy. —thanks to Alyse for tthis link

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The Gamer as Artiste New York Times Week in Review article, December 4, 2005

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Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making us Smarter by Steve Johnson, and a New Yorker review of the book.

The Guardian had an article in this morning [10/27/04] about how London University's Institute for Education has found computer/video games to be good educational tools for children. Here's the site http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,1336802,00.html
[Thanks to Schuyler for this, and when/if the link is no longer current, someone please e-mail me.]

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"My kids are ECSTATIC over a show we digitally recorded last night on PBS: Video Game Revolution.
Here's a link: http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/
And here's an interactive timeline of video game history: http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/history/ Check your listings, as it may be on again." —Anne Ohman
I saw this, and it's about the tightest, best documentary I've seen in my life. I ordered it on DVD immediately. (—Sandra)

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Minoring in Video Games (coming to more than one university)

High Score Education: Games, not school, are teaching kids to think. (by James Paul Gee, on Wired site.)

Cutting-Edge Art and Music in Video Game Production (excerpts from and links to two articles from March 2004)

Do Video Games Affect Kids, Really?

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ORIGINS OF THIS PROJECT

August 17, 2002, at the HSC conference in Sacramento, a workshop on video gaming was presented by Dan Vilter, Kathy Ward, and Sandra Dodd (and their special presenters and evidence, Jonathan Ward, Matthew Vilter and Holly Dodd).

Most of this page grew out of that presentation, and the beginning of the gathering of our defense of those who are not afraid of Children who Play Video Games.

One of the best online articles for homeschoolers and parents is Kathy Ward's article on video games. Kathy has eight children, once limited gaming time and access, and decided over the years not to do so anymore. She has a child who compensated for dyslexia and learned to read, with the help of video games.

"If You Give a Kid a Nintendo..."

Kandie Demarest has an autistic son, and wrote an article about his experiences called VIDEO GAMES - What are they good for?

After hearing part of the tape of the workshop, Marty Dodd and Jeremy Oat rattled off a list of video games with female leads for your consideration, and additions are welcome. (Some have been sent already by other readers and added—thank you!!)

Here are several testimonials:from parents and gamers or both.

"The amount of problem solving that my kids go through while playing is incredible." (Stephanie E's account of Game Cube and her young sons)

A boy named Ryan Smith has sent a note and a poem in defense of games.

Here are stories of video games helping kids learn to read: Reading from Videogames

Renowned comic-book author Gerard Jones argues that bloody videogames, gun-glorifying gangsta rap and other forms of 'creative violence' help far more children than they hurt, by giving kids a tool to master their rage. Is he insightful, or insane? Check out this interview at MotherJones.com

NEWER: Amazing orchestral stuff by Jeremy Soule and Nobuo Uematsu, and some commentary, and links, and videos...

"I thought you might enjoy Zach's blog. He writes about his passion - video games. Zach is fifteen and has been radically unschooled for three years." (written in early 2007)

High Score Education: Games, not school, are teaching kids to think. by James Paul Gee, a reading professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.

An interview concerning Ratings for Video Games is at the Family Education site. Here is an excerpt:

The majority of our market is over 18. By the way, only 7 percent of all video games carry the “mature” (suitable for 17 and older) rating. As for the government, we don’t tolerate the idea of the government regulating books. This is no different.

Q: But many people would argue that the video game experience is much more intense for kids than the experience of reading a book, and therefore should be regulated.

A: There is absolutely no research to support the idea that playing a violent video game leads to violent behavior. That’s the first point I’d like to make. The second is that with regard to books – who is to say that someone who reads a lurid crime novel won’t take away ideas. You can learn how to make a bomb by reading a book. But look – the crime rate is going down at the same time the use of video games is exploding. Finally, what we’re talking about here is a game. It’s entertainment.

Video Games and Children by Bernard Cesarone cites studies and gives statistics (for those readers who like such things) but is probably nearly a decade old. Some comments are outdated, such as this: "The world of video games has little sense of community and few team players. Also, most video games do not allow play by more than one player at a time." Still, the closing comment is this:

"Given inconclusive research, recommendations concerning video games must be conservative. According to researcher Jeanne Funk (1993), a ban on video games is:

probably not ... in the child's best interests. Limiting playing time and monitoring game selection according to developmental level and game content may be as important as similar parental management of television privileges. Parents and professionals should also seek creative ways to increase the acceptance, popularity, and availability of games that are relatively prosocial, educational, and fun. (p.89)

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Humor

12 Great Video Games With Ridiculous Premises (very fun article)

Red vs. Blue downloadable Halo and Halo II humor

Super Mario Brothers analyzed as Communist Propaganda

Video-Game Characters Denounce Randomly Placed Swinging Blades

"When Vice City is released on Oct. 29, it will freak out millions of parents and sell millions of copies, but it will also force us to realize that video games aren't toys anymore; they're sophisticated, thought-provoking entertainment for grownups. At their best, they're art. "As for the violence, Vice City doesn't pull any punches — but why should it? Studies show the average American gamer is well into his 20s . . . . "There has been a demographic shift in who's playing," Donovan argues. "You're telling a 25-year-old that he's supposed to play with a hedgehog?" [quotes from recent Time Magazine article on Grand Theft Auto III.]

A chronology of video game systems (along with some other historical listings) is linked here for your nostalgic pleasure, or for your brand-new news, if you never played Sonic, Mario, or Pong.

Games * Design * Art * Culture is largely about online games, but has links to design-related sites and articles. For those more interested in how games come to be, who designs them, and so forth this site will be of interest.

If you have testimonials you would like to donate to this cause, or know of articles or resources online you think should be linked here, write to [email protected]

Thanks for visiting!




Click above to unplug Mario's headphones so you can hear what he's playing!

and click here to go back up and read

In less than ten years, video game music moved from the Mario song above to full orchestral works. Check this out

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Other kinds of games Learning to read from Video Games Unschooling