Why Kids Play and What They Learn
Essay: Video Games: Why Kids Play and What They Learn. by Jill M. Olthouse
URL = http://www.comminit.com/en/node/290522/307
Description
"This paper provides an overview of the relationship between video games and children's motivation and learning. Author Jill M. Olthouse encourages teachers seeking to understand their paedological value to consider their appeal as play, reinforcement, social interaction, fantasy, and cognitive exercise. Olthouse examines each of these elements; for instance, the social motivations of video games include competition, cooperation, communities, tribes, and teams. She explores the specific paedagogical elements of games, detailing the ways in which video games teach metacognition. There is, Olthouse says, debate about whether video games are teaching children skills and values that will help them. She concludes that "video games and their effects cannot be judged as a whole....Instead of asking, 'Are video games fun and educative?' the questions that should be asked are: 'In what contexts and with which students are video games fun and educative?', 'To what extent do players exa!
mine the values in the video games and question them?' and 'In what contexts do skills learned in video games transfer to other areas?' These questions provide a basis for future research into how children relate to video games."