The genre of video games is various: adventure, puzzle-solving, racing, role-playing and simulation. The genre is not limited to these five. One of the categories of video games is educational. Reader Rabbit is edutainment (education-entertainment) game which enhances kids' reading and spelling skill. Storybook Weaver requires players to create their own stories (Wikipedia.) In Japan, Nintendo DS produces many educational games such as English Training (Eigo duke). English Training is very famous. Player can learn spelling and taking a dictation on touch panel. A few years ago, I heard that some junior high-school installed this game in an English class to build kids' vocabulary and improve listening skill. I thought that Japanese must focus more on speaking from childhood than they boost spelling skill, but this is good way to inspire kids who like electronic games to learn more.
(*picture: Japanese juinor-high studets are studying English using Nintendo DS.)
According to Mighty Mommy, which is one of my favorite podcasts, other genre also can be an educational game surprisingly. Adventure games develop problem-solving skill and information retention while exploring. Racing games require players to choose right car to win, and develop quick hand-eye coordination (Mighty Mommy.) When I was in Japan, I had seen a boy playing a video game at kids' floor in a department store. Probably he was playing a fighting game there while waiting for his mother who enjoyed shopping. Amazingly, he was pressing many buttons very quickly at lightning speed, gazing at display, and he seemed to win. Do you know how many buttons a recent controller has? Twelve! Twelve buttons are on a PlayStation controller. The boy knew which button works for what correctly. My controller of Nintendo Family Computer over twenty years ago had only one cross button on left side of a controller and two small round buttons on right side. Kids in digital age definitely can improve hand-eye coordination, and they can do more than I could do. Take a look at this movie. A boy wearing a sweatshort printed "video game" is playaing a video game. Look at his fingers.
Here is another example. Nobunaga no Yabo (Nobunaga's ambition), turn-based strategy video game was one of my favorite games. This game was set in the Age of Civil Wars, about five hundred years ago of Japan. In this game, I became a lord and captured territories by fighting against other countries. The final goal was to rule Japan. I got interested in history around this period because a number of famous lords who I learned in a history class appeared in this game. I started reading history books and biographies of those warriors. Perhaps, I knew about the history more than I learned at school.
An educational game is not the only one category which kids can learn something from. Even violent video games could be educational if we saw them from different point of view such as hand-eye coordination and strategy skill. How wonderful it is for kids to be able to learn something having fun! I agree with this idea. Although I still believe that kids shouldn't play video games instead of doing homework, I hope my daughter will learn a lot from video games and build skills as well as she learn at school.
1 comments:
yeah, I saw many educational video games!! I think sometimes it is really fun!! BUT, sadly,
non educational games give much fun than educational games... well, so far , according to
my experience.
However, you said that when we play videogames
strategy or hand-eye coordination (?) improve! Well, I totally agree with that. There are
many guyfriends of mine in Korea and some of
them were really good at school work but
when it is their freetime, they play "STARCRAFT"
(well it is computer game)2-3hours. They told me
that, if you don't use your HEAD, you can't play
any kind of game. So, I think if you can control
yourself, playing videogames for 30 minutes-1 hour might be okay.
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