eLearning Post directed me to this article “Play and learn”” by David Stonehouse that has a couple of interesting points raised by Steve Johnson (Discover article).
Johnson says in this recent article that violent games like GTASA help to reduce violent juvenile crimes by giving “thrill seekers an escape”. Pointing to a study (Child Well-Being Index, Duke University North Carolina)that showed that youth crime has dropped 2/3rds since 1975 as evidence. I support the idea that games are potentially powerful learning tools, but this sort of correlation is just lame. You can point to the increased use of caffeinated drinks and say the same thing (maybe not, but it helps fuel the fire). To this, Jane Healy points out that parents are still the ones that need to take responsibility for what their children. And on this point I fully agree. It’s great that there are people who are enthusiastic about games, but it’s great to see that there is some temperament to the field.
The article goes on to comment of simulations as being useful tools – pointing out that a range of other professions use simulations for training, so why is it a taboo to use games (fun simulations – unless we want to start paying kids to go to school, there isn’t another decent motivator out there) in schools?
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