Video games and Digital Literacy
brings to light a unique issue revolving around video games and education and the
article discusses the literacy that is developed from playing video games.
Julio was a participant in this study that focused on video games and the
literacy that are created from the interaction: from people posting online and
discussing about games, all the way through the interaction that happens while
they are playing video games. The author, Steinkuehler, argues that any
interaction involving video games can be considered a form of digital literacy
practice (citation). He argues that there are two forms of this literacy, video
game play itself and the online community that is created around any successful
game title. Steinkuehler found that video games could serve as a form of
literacy that younger people learn from. He argues that literacy can be encouraged
through finding exactly what young people want to learn about and bringing
those topics into the classroom.
This article bring to light many
underlying issues that will need to be addressed as a society in the future.
With the popularity of video games, should they be used in the classroom to
help educate? Issues like this are something that older generations will have a
hard time understanding. It is amazing what can be learned from video games,
but there is too much of a negative stereotype that is associated with them that
will make using them in the classroom very difficult, and this is probably the
biggest barrier that would need to be overcome. From personal experience, I
believe that bringing video games into the classroom would help many students
learn better. It is undeniable the role that video games play in society, since
they are so prevalent, why would they not be used for education? Many people
want to claim that violent video games can encourage people to be more violent.
If we were to follow this logic then wouldn’t an educations game about science
allow gamers to learn more scientific? These are examples of how some of the
issues that revolve around getting video game implementation into the
educational system.
In class we discussed the umbrella perspective
on communication technologies. This was presented to us as a graph in the form
of an umbrella. I would argue that the individual users of video games have
successfully penetrated almost every aspect of the social system, so why is it
not being used more in the educational process? Video games are all around us
weather we recognize it our not. It could be considered irresponsible of us to
not use this obsession to our advantage in education. Not only have video games
penetrated society, but they have also enabled people to do something different
with their time. Tactical games, like Call of Duty, have encouraged users to
change their thinking in order to adapt to a game. This has lead to users
developing many different thought processes depending on what type of game they
are engaging in. One of the underlying principles of education is stimulation
of the mind. Keeping that in mind, are video games something we should resist
even thought the help stimulate different thought processes, or something that
should be looked to as a tool for development?
Citation
Steinkuehler, Constance (2010) Video
games and digital literacies, Journal of Adolescent & adult literacy. 54,
61-63
Video Gamers [Video Game Systems]. November 20, 2011, from: http://smartchoosing.com/buy-video-games
Little, Riley [blog post]. (2010). November 20, 2011, from: http://gamerant.com/call-of-duty-black-ops-reviews-riley-51902/
