Emerging Technologies Consulting

Steph's drawing of SIMS house

Many parents and teachers lament the obsession kids have with video games and have concerns over the violent and sexualized content, but not all games are bad and many of them, even the ones that look bad on the surface, can actually help kids learn.  James Paul Gee has argued that the way kids approach games should be a lesson to educators about how to make learning more engaging.  On the left is a picture my daughter drew to help her design a house in The SIMS, a game she really loves.  She spends all kinds of time arranging rooms and houses, building stories from the different characters she creates.  She’s nine, and already she’s developing spatial skills that may lead to an interest in architecture or engineering.  In creating stories, she learns about social interactions between people, how to develop a narrative, what people will be interested in (appreciation of audience), and description.  A couple of days ago, she replicated The Biggest Loser in The SIMS, creating Bob and Jillian, and several “contestants,” who got to move out of the house once they were fit enough.

I think we don’t always know what a kid will get out of a game.  My son learned about baking from Runescape and has helped me do some actual baking since.  My daughter also plays Spore and has learned something about evolution from it.  In social games, kids also learn about how to interact with kids of different ages.  My son regularly plays Runescape with an 18-year-old who’s in the army.  As long as parents stay involved in these interactions and monitor them, they can be good ways for kids to learn appropriate behavior around others.

There are pleny of people out there researching how games can be used in teaching and learning and many games are being built specifically for learning, but we shouldn’t knock some of the teaching and learning moments offered by those games we play “just for fun.”

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