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Sean McHugh

Girls Should Play More Video Games, And Other Thoughts On "Cognitive Balance"... - 0 views

anniemurphypaul.com/...-thoughts-on-cognitive-balance

games video games play balance Gaming gamers learning

shared by Sean McHugh on 27 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Girls should play more video games.
  • spatial skills matter: The ability to mentally manipulate shapes and otherwise understand how the three-dimensional world works turns out to be an important predictor of creative and scholarly achievements
  • spatial skills can be improved by training; these improvements persist over time; and they “transfer” to tasks that are different from the tasks used in the training
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  • the informal education children receive can be just as important as what they learn in the classroom. We need to think more carefully about how kids’ formal and informal educational experiences fit together, and how one can fill gaps left by the other.
  • As kids grow older, much of the experience they get in manipulating three-dimensional objects comes from playing video games
  • playing an action video game “can virtually eliminate” the gender difference in a basic capacity they call spatial attention, while at the same time reducing the gender difference in the ability to mentally rotate objects, a higher-level spatial skill
  • The informal learning environments of television, video games, and the Internet are producing learners with a new profile of cognitive skills.
    • Sean McHugh
      Sean McHugh on 27 Sep 15
       
      This is such a critical observation!
Sean McHugh

Why video games shouldn't freak parents out | - 0 views

ideas.ted.com/mes-shouldnt-freak-parents-out

Gaming

shared by Sean McHugh on 19 May 16 - No Cached
  • kids really do not like educational games; in fact, they hate them. And as I watched more kids play video games, I realized Sid was 100% correct. If given a choice between a game designed with a learning goal or a commercial game designed for fun, kids’ll choose fun every time.
  • when we reject the games that boys play, the games are merely a proxy for the boys themselves.We reject games because they’re violent, individualistic, competitive, engrossing and largely foreign to us as teachers, parents, leaders, adults. And these are the precise characteristics of boys that we reject when we enforce zero tolerance policies
  • We don’t have specific limits, because their lives are full of other things that are equally as fun and engaging for them. So, yes, it’s OK for your child to game, as long as they do it in a careful, balanced and sustained way (yes, sustained: deep engagement, grit, perseverance and other good skills are not built by grazing). Valuing their gaming activities amounts to respecting them and their culture
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  • competitive, violent fantasy games contribute to the development of strong future leaders and citizens.
  • Sean McHugh on 19 May 16
     
    For years, I'd been making the case that we should borrow from the games kids love to create new kinds of educational games. But after that one memorable lunch, I realized that we didn't need to co-opt the mechanics of gaming at all. We could - and should - use the games that kids were already playing, the immersive, sometimes violent games that hold boys and girls enraptured for hours in a state of flow and focus.
Sean McHugh

Video Games Aren't Totally Damaging Your Brain - 0 views

vitals.lifehacker.com/damaging-your-brain-1797837012

video games gaming brain

shared by Sean McHugh on 18 Aug 17 - No Cached
  • It’s a tradeoff, because [people who play action games] show increases in other areas of mental function,” Fonzo points out. While their hippocampus shrank, they also showed increases in grey matter in their caudate nucleus, a region of the brain partially responsible for habit learning.
  • subjects who played a Mario Brothers 3-D platform games saw an increase in the grey matter of their hippocampus
  • the ideal is a balanced use of both the hippocampus and caudate nucleus memory systems,
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  • by playing the right games, ones that encourage exploration and problem solving rather than just camping and sniping soldiers
Sean McHugh

Is There a Healthy Way for Students to Use Social Media? | Greater Good Magazine - 0 views

greatergood.berkeley.edu/...r_students_to_use_social_media

screen screentime screen time social media students

shared by Sean McHugh on 27 May 18 - No Cached
  • we might be overlooking the “educational and psychological benefits of using social media sites,” such as developing critical thinking and perspective-taking skills
  • parents and educators have been led to demonize what could simply be an evolving means of social connection
  • a constant stream of interruptions
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  • we are probably all struggling to balance what our devices make possible with what they seem to impose on our attention spans and the rest of our health. Yet, for children, this difficulty is more acute because their bodies and brains are still developing.
  • heighten awareness of our multi-generational love of screens and encourage kids and parents to face it together.
  • None of us know the full extent of how our digital dependence is affecting us, or how it will affect the youngest generations growing up today. The least we can do is look up every now and then to ask each other how we’re doing, and how we can do better
  • they’re not alone in this struggle to practice what they preach
Sean McHugh

Video Games Aren't Addictive - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...deo-games-arent-addictive.html

gaming addiction video games

shared by Sean McHugh on 15 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Playing video games is not addictive in any meaningful sense. It is normal behavior that, while perhaps in many cases a waste of time, is not damaging or disruptive of lives in the way drug or alcohol use can be
  • This is true but not illuminating.
  • These areas of the brain — those that produce and respond to the neurotransmitter dopamine — are involved in just about any pleasurable activity: having sex, enjoying a nice conversation, eating good food, reading a book, using methamphetamines.
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  • On its own, the fact that a pleasurable activity involves dopamine release tells us nothing else about it.
  • A large-scale study of internet-based games recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry bears out our skepticism about this “addiction
  • the diagnosis of addiction doesn’t make much sense to begin with
  • by treating the immoderate playing of video games as an addiction, we are pathologizing relatively normal behavior
  • We don’t deny that new technologies come with some perils. We understand the nostalgia for the halcyon days of, say, the 1950s, when people were not yet bound to their personal technology and were free to enjoy the simpler pleasures of life, like stickball and climbing trees — and getting polio and having to wait in line at the bank to check your account balance.We doubt most people would actually want to return to the good old days. We and our children are “addicted” to new technologies because, for the most part, they improve our lives or are simply pleasurable
  • indulging in panic about technology or nostalgia for a better past that never really existed does us no good
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