As a parent I try to encourage my 8 year old to be reflective of his choices. When it comes to playing games on our family's mobile device I encourage him to balance his game playing with physical and a variety of mental activities. I also have conversations about the games he chooses so I can understand his thinking and also make connections to his virtual worlds.
My son will often justify game-playing by insisting: "Don't worry, mom, it's educational!" They I ask him to describe how the game is "educational" and what he learns by playing it. This morning we discussed Cut the Rope, one of his all-time favourites. He is astoundingly good at this game and impresses me with his visual/spatial awareness. In the words of my 8 year old, here is why Cut the Rope is a "good" game with sound educational value:
I had this conversation the morning after I listened to James Paul Gee's YouTube lecture on Principles of Gaming and my immediate thoughts were that my 8 year old son had just eloquently described the underlying learning principles of Cut the Rope - in 8 year old language. According to Gee, these principles include the active learning principle, the achievement principle, the psychosocial moratorium principle, the practice principle, the ongoing learning principle, the discovery principle and the transfer principle.
References:
Gee, James Paul, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2003 http://mason.gmu.edu/~lsmithg/jamespaulgee2
Gee, James Paul. Principles on Gaming. Retrieved March 27, 2014 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aQAgAjTozk
My son will often justify game-playing by insisting: "Don't worry, mom, it's educational!" They I ask him to describe how the game is "educational" and what he learns by playing it. This morning we discussed Cut the Rope, one of his all-time favourites. He is astoundingly good at this game and impresses me with his visual/spatial awareness. In the words of my 8 year old, here is why Cut the Rope is a "good" game with sound educational value:
- It's challenging and every time you finish a level you can unlock a new level which has more challenges
- The goal is really clear: Feed Omnom the candy
- The patterns get more complex but are based on something familiar - cutting the rope, for example and releasing the candy so it lands in Omnom's mouth
- The best part is, you can make mistakes and always restart without a penalty. I like that because it gives me time to figure out some of the more complicated problems like this one level where the candy is broken in half and you need to put the halves together before you can feed it to Onnom
- Oh, and you get rewarded when you finish a level. It's satisfying and I like how it makes my brain feel
I had this conversation the morning after I listened to James Paul Gee's YouTube lecture on Principles of Gaming and my immediate thoughts were that my 8 year old son had just eloquently described the underlying learning principles of Cut the Rope - in 8 year old language. According to Gee, these principles include the active learning principle, the achievement principle, the psychosocial moratorium principle, the practice principle, the ongoing learning principle, the discovery principle and the transfer principle.
References:
Gee, James Paul, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2003 http://mason.gmu.edu/~lsmithg/jamespaulgee2
Gee, James Paul. Principles on Gaming. Retrieved March 27, 2014 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aQAgAjTozk