VIDEO GAMES

Schuyler Waynforth on Video Games (blog post, extensive, many links) Video Game Therapy Retunes Brain, with links to other articles on that and "other noble purposes" of video games. Very cool. Hi all, Steven Johnson has an article in the July 2005 Discover magazine about the amazing learning that goes in in video games, as well as some recommendations for good video games. (Johnson is the author of the book Everything Bad is Good for You, which is apparently debunking myths about TV, video games, and so on.) You can probably find Discover at your library, or you can access the article here: brain-on-video-games You can read the full article by becoming a Discover.com member for free and then paying $1.00 for the article. My favorite moment in the article is when the author is showing his seven-year-old nephew the SimCity neighborhood that he built. When the author notes that he's having problem getting a certain area with factories to come back to life, the boy turns to him and says, "I think you need to lower your industrial tax rates." Yeow. Peace, Amy

Kat (who's 14) is taking guitar lessons for the first time. Her teacher was impressed that she could read and play the notes without looking at the fret bar and wondered how she could do that if she'd never played before. Kat replied "Three years of playing video games!" She said he laughed.

Joyce

NEW LINKS:

An excellent account of Super Smash Bros.' Brawl—one family's experiences on the release night.

"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.

Mary Gold has given us her article "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

Undying Truth is a site begun in January 2003 by a teenaged girl who loves playing video games and did not love hearing nonsense about it. She is collecting articles in support of video games.

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

And if you like video game music, you should check out The Lifestream Internet Radio, created by a homeschooler named Michael, nearly 17, who is allowed to play all the video games he wants to.

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.

Video Games: Harmfully Addictive or a Unique Educational Environment? An interview with David Deutsch, award-winning physicist and author of The Fabric of Reality, about physics and philosophy.

Dear Mrs. Sandra Dodd,          Thank you for your page on videogames and their many benefits. I am a long-timeavid gamer; I've loved games ever since I got my very first NES. While some may believe that games will "rot your brain," I'm living proof to the contrary. I'm now 23, and I still play games. However, in the mean time, I have graduated high school with honors and a National Honors Society member. I've earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and engineering, cum laude. I'm currently enrolled in law school, and doing quite well. I personally attribute a lot of my academic success to video games, and always have. One important lesson I've learned is how to budget my time effectively. Video games also serve as an important release from the stress created by such rigorous study. Also, I believe each and every game teaches important educational concepts indirectly (e.g. reading comprehension, logic and mathematics through puzzle solving, hand-eye coordination, etc.). I'm very supportive of parents who get gaming systems for their kids, and I hate it when I hear how games are "destroying" our youth. I hope many parents read your page and make use of it! Thanks again, Brian I totally agree with him about the stress reduction, too. A benefit I hadn't really thought about for a while—in fact, I had forgotten how my husband and I played videogames (Galaga, Centipedes, PacMan, etc.) for hours and hours in the student center at USC, when we were both in grad school there. That was definitely stress reduction therapy!! -pam

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

Political correctness is not their point, remember, and it is NOT a prim Christian environment over there...
but if you make it to the end of the story they offer to sell you a Communist Mario t-shirt!!

Their new site has animations and will read the text to you, but beware if you're impatient. It's not too hard to get two or three sections running all at the same time. I could read the text quicker than they could read it to me, so I've put the older link here. They can offer you the new one.

Video-Game Characters Denounce Randomly Placed Swinging Blades

DARN! Now you have to be a premium member of The Onion site to see that, but here's their description

Video-Game Characters Denounce Randomly Placed Swinging Blades WASHINGTON, DC–A coalition of video-game characters representing the nation's leading systems appeared before Congress Monday to decry "the pointless, deadly presence" of spinning blades in...
3627 | 9 August 2000 | News

and if you're a premium member, proceed with the link above and log in there.

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Adult Games: Art and Violence?

"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.]

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History, Design, Technical Aspects

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.

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How You Can Help!

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 Sandra@SandraDodd.com

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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