Gaming is something I know next to nothing about, I’ll admit that. I was a mother by the time Atari came out and was introduced to the industry when my sons got one from their grandmother for Christmas. They loved it and gaming is still the favorite past time of both of my grown sons.
My elder son, Tim, was a new teacher in 2005 and as a gamer, he, and Jim McIntosh, another social studies teacher at Roosevelt High School in Chicago, decided to introduce Civilization to their World Civilizations class as described in MTV’s article http://tiny.cc/SEmgz.
Tim and Jim wrote Firaxis, the creator of Civilization III and asked for a donation of the game for their class. The company sent 25 copies of the game so that the entire computer lab could be loaded up. It was Student Development Day, a monthly day in which the students take a break from literature and math and study things that enrich their lives in other ways. Teachers were supposed to teach something that they themselves were good at and/ or about which they were passionate. Gaming was a natural for Meegan and McIntosh.
"I think one of the things video games provide students is a sense of an immediate reward," Meegan said. He wanted to tap into that. "I want to use it as a tool for them to discover more about what really happened and who these people really are," he explained. Meegan said the game can help illuminate such concepts as guns vs. butter, supply and demand, and the pros and cons of military strength.
I agree with Tim in that the most valuable part of this experience is in learning about supply and demand, but Buckingham piqued my interest in his discussion of gaming as a medium in and of itself because the user has to interact with it and that that creates a literate gamer.
Is it true that everything I interact with makes me more literate, more knowledgeable? That is what I think of when I think of literacy. Knowledge – both in knowing how to do something and in understanding what it means, or could mean, either to one personally or to the neighborhood, or to the world at large. Are video games really making us more literate? I would have to vote no, not by what I have seen so far. Sure, the storyline of a game like Civilization could have value in a classroom but to say that gaming brings a literacy all its own Is really stretching it, in my opinion.
That is not to say that gaming does not have a place in school or in the library. I just argue that it is not making our children more literate. Additionally, I think that the time today’s children and teens spend with video games is detrimental to their literacy. Interacting with a character on a TV screen is not as valuable as interacting physically with another in play or sports, nor is it the same thing as broadening horizons with a book.
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I think that the literacy-improving abilities of video games vary pretty widely. MarioKart, for example, probably doesn't do much to improve anyone's literacy (or anything else: I get nauseous every time I play that game - maybe because it goes too fast?)
ReplyDeleteBut there is a lot more to literacy than reading text on a page, and I think there are a number of video & computer games that are capable of improving kids' literacy skills. Many roleplaying games (I'm thinking of Knights of the Old Republic specifically, since that's the one I've actually played, ha) have complex plots and characters, just like a book or movie would. And unlike books and movies, games are interactive, allowing you to actually influence what happens in the story. What better way to learn about the way cause and effect happen in stories than to actually cause some effects? They also learn to analyze characters, as they choose how to interact with video game characters. In more complex games, you have to use different tactics depending on who you're talking to, and you figure out whether you need to be (friendly/hostile/cajoling/etc.) by reading the character. I think that the immersive, world-building games can be a great tool for teaching kids about narrative.
I definitely agree with you, though, that kids and teens have significantly too much "screen time" in general. As cool as video games are, and as valuable as I think they can be, they're not a replacement for more traditional methods of learning literacy - or for going outside or spending time with friends. Plus, let's face it, most of the games kids play do not provide the detailed worldbuilding and complex storylines of the best RPGs. As you say, simply interacting with something doesn't build literacy skills (like when I interact with a sandwich)- so I'd definitely be dubious about claims that Wii Fit or Grand Theft Auto improved literacy skills (at least the specific literacy skills we're discussing - playing video games would increase their techno-literacy, if that's a thing).