Again, this is one of those few articles that I jumped the NYT login hoops to get. Bill found the article and pointed out one passage, but I have a different one that I think is telling – not so much about the game, but in terms of how we may want to look at education in general and how the whole idea of delayed gratification/hard fun thing can be a useful tool in learning and life in general:
[Steven Johnson of Everything Bad is Good for you fame] âBut my wife made a good point when I was talking about this the other day. She says itâs important for kids to do boring things too. Because if you can find excitement in something boring, then youâre set up for life. Whereas if you constantly need entertainment, you might have a problem, because life is full of things that arenât entertaining. So I think Iâd have three days of Spore and two days of obligatory Latin.â
One of the things that I notice about many people who talk about games is that they seem to think that games are constant stimulation. And those of us who play games, especially “builder” games, know that this is not the case. The majority of the game is spent sitting wait, and managing things that are seemingly trivial. This is something that I think in the MTV/YouTube era that we are in is something that may not happen as much anymore. I only need to look to the comments about how IM is too slow for some kids today (ok, it’s really email, but you get the idea) to see that this may be the case.
These slow times during the game and life allow one to pause and reflect on what has happened and what needs to be done, something that is certainly integral to the learning process.
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