Professor pushing video games to help kids land jobs
by Blake Snow 
{ Jan 11th 2007 at 9:25PM }
University of Wisconsin professor David Shaffer continues his crusade to help you and I get away with playing games during Bio 101. As previously reported, Shaffer is urging schools to use video games to better prepare students for the work force noting the medium's positive effects when used by the U.S. military to train soldiers, cancer victims to battle their illness, and surgeons aiming to keep their hands nimble. He intelligently tells Reuters: "There are bad games out there, just as there are bad books. So adults who care about what children learn have to educate themselves about games -- and, more important, start to think about learning in new ways for the digital age of global competition." The take-away, kids: play games to help learn how to juggle technology. Just don't play them for more than 40 hours a week. Okay maybe 30. 20?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
GoldenS1104 @ Jan 11th 2007 10:11PM
I totally agree with this guy. Not because of my love of video games, but because conservative douche bags are stereotyping games as bad. Not all games are bad!
Will Ooi @ Jan 11th 2007 10:14PM
Finally, video games being given their rightful place in society as a respectable and powerful medium.
Evan @ Jan 12th 2007 12:27AM
Anyone notice that the kid in the photo is playing a game on a Mac!
Andrew Fong @ Jan 12th 2007 12:47AM
Totally agree, but the trick is to make games that are actually fun and educational at the same time. Off the top of my head:
For example, Civilization is both addictively fun and an excellent tool for learning about history. The scenarios about the various wars are a prefect way to get kids more interested in otherwise dry material, and the game does an excellent job of teaching you the trade off between "guns" and "butter".
Along that line, Defcon would be an excellent way to start a discussion about nuclear weapons, the Cold War and game theory.
And of course, there's the Oregon Trail =).
Couple of caveats though: First, a lot of the benefits can be obtained through board games and simple methods. But, you could argue that kids are going to game no matter what, so if you're a history teacher, it's better that they're playing Civ4 instead of GTA4, right? You could also argue that the class offers adults a way to help kids deal with video game addiction. This provides a legitimiate excuse for adults to be directly involved in the gaming process.
Second, many adults may be out of touch with gamers. It's unreasonable to expect tons of teachers to be familiar with all the games out there. To that end, there's probably some profit to be made by establishing some sort of firm that caters to these teachers, trains them, and maybe even supplies the games themselves.