What Video Games Teach…What?!?

I have been reading more and more of James Paul Gee’s book, What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy, and I have been opened to a whole new look on video games. I have grown up playing all different orts of video games, but have been “slacking” in my gaming these past recent years. But James Gee, makes me almost want to put down his book, and pick up a game and start playing it, because he has me convinced video games are vital tools that we should use for teaching.

Our group has explored each of the chapters and the different principles James Gee has pointed out throughout his chapters. But I want to focus on one aspect that our group did not discuss, and probably wont which is fine, but it is a passage that caught my eye in particular.

James Gee writes in chapter 2, that video games are tools that can help you understand a concept in an easier way than maybe reading it from a book, or reading a list. For example he used the example of basketball. I, personally, love sports and can tell you most things about any sport you want to know about. It is a love of mine, but there are definitely people I know and talk to daily that don’t know sports like I know. James Gee explains “a textbook that contained all the facts and rules about basketball read by students who never played or watched the game.” (22-23).

Thinking about it, learning the game of basketball, from reading a book, or a list of the rules would make it extremely difficult to learn the game. But James Gee, thinks paying a video game is an easy way to explain a foreign concept to students and make it easier for students learn the concept, or game of basketball. James Gee has a solid point, because video games force one to interact with the game, and will help teach the gamer something new. No matter what the game forces the “gamer” to do, there is still an interaction between the gamer and the game, and something new is always being learned by the gamer.

It all is a genius way to teach people new concepts, instead of just reading and writing in a book like in school, but learn in a new format such as video games. I am convinced video games in fact do have a strength in teaching students in school, and may make it easier for some students to understand new concepts, and it forces students to engage in a fun, interesting, new way of learning.