Back to gaming

Okay, now that I am finding some more time to post here again, let's go back to one of my own interests... gaming. You may recall my postings on Are computer games a boon or our ruin? and Gaming in education.

First, here are a collection of blog entries that I have come across about gaming that have struck my interest. As there are a lot that have built up over the past five or six weeks, I can't speak to each one individually.

• Critiquing the video game violence studies from Cognitive Daily
• Research Conflicts On Impact Of Violent Video Games from The Committed Sardine Blog
• Play and learn from elearningpost
• How a gym teacher and a guidance counselor support games in education from mackenty.org
• What ELSE do games teach us? from mackenty.org

All of these entries have brought me back around to thinking about something that obviously is of little interest to my dissertation topic, otherwise it would have appeared somewhere in my comprehensive exam questions (see Methodology Question, Practice question, Comps Foundations question, and Theory of interaction?). However, it is something that continues to puzzle me.

I know myself, how I can sit down for hours playing Civilization. I have watched younger cousins sit for hours and play other computer and video games. I have seen elementary school students, virtual secondary students, and my own pre-service teacher education students creating these Powerpoint Games. In all these instances, I see people that are totally engaged with what they are involved in. I see people who can tell you the ins and outs of the worlds that they are exploring through these screens.

These realizations lead me to two lines of thought.... The first is that there has to be something educational going on here. But the second, which I think is more applicable to me as an educator, how do we translate that into the way in which we teach?

Tags: game, games, gaming, high school, higher education, education