Video Games Learning Tools? -- Courant.com - The Diigo Meta page

• 19 Aug 08
  

  Anne Bubnic

  Researchers gathering in Boston for the American Psychological Association convention detailed a series of studies suggesting that video games can be powerful learning tools — from increasing the problem solving potential of younger students to improving the suturing skills of laparoscopic surgeons.

  ad4dcss gaming digital media digital learning digital youth

  • One study even looked at whether playing "World of Warcraft," the world's biggest multiplayer online game, can improve scientific thinking.
    
    The conclusion? Certain types of video games can have benefits beyond the virtual thrills of blowing up demons or shooting aliens.
  • In one study, 122 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-grade students were asked to think out loud for 20 minutes while playing a game they had never seen before. Researchers studied the statements the children made to see if playing the game improved cognitive and perceptual skills.
    
    While older children seemed more interested in just playing the game, younger children showed more of an interest in setting up a series of short-term goals needed to help them learn the game.
    
  • "The younger kids are focusing more on their planning and problem solving while they are actually playing the game, while adolescents are focusing less on their planning and strategizing and more on the here and now," said researcher and Fordham University psychologist Fran Blumberg. "They're thinking less strategically than the younger kids."
    
  • Another study compared surgeons who play video games to those who don't.
    
    Even after taking into account differences in age, years of medical training and the number of laparoscopic surgeries performed, researchers found an edge for gamer surgeons.
    
    "The single best predictor of their skills is how much they had played video games in the past and how much they played now," said Iowa State University psychologist Douglas Gentile. "Those were better predictors of surgical skills than years of training and number of surgeries performed," Gentile said. "So the first question you might ask your surgeon is how many of these [surgeries] have you done and the second question is, 'Are you a gamer?'"

  2 more annotations...

• 18 Aug 08
  

  owen walton

  edutainment

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