Academic Analysis

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/