Skip to main content

Home/ EdTech/ Group items tagged play

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Sean McHugh

Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study | ... - 0 views

  • the present study is the first to investigate the effects of long-term violent video gameplay
  • Our participants played the violent video game Grand Theft Auto V, the non-violent video game The Sims 3 or no game at all for 2 months on a daily basis. No significant changes were observed, neither when comparing the group playing a violent video game to a group playing a non-violent game, nor to a passive control group.
  • the question that society is actually interested in is not: “Are people more aggressive after having played violent video games for a few minutes? And are these people more aggressive minutes after gameplay ended?”, but rather “What are the effects of frequent, habitual violent video game playing? And for how long do these effects persist (not in the range of minutes but rather weeks and months)?”
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Both training groups were instructed to play the game for at least 30 min a day
  • players are rewarded for their use of violence as a means to advance in the game
  • so that gamers could in principle decide not to commit violent acts
  • The participants in the violent video game group played on average 35 h and the non-violent video game group 32 h spread out across the 8 weeks
  • Since effects observed only for a few minutes after short sessions of video gaming are not representative of what society at large is actually interested in, namely how habitual violent video gameplay affects behaviour on a more long-term basis, studies employing longer training intervals are highly relevant
  • the present results provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games.
Sean McHugh

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

  • 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
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • 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
       
      This is such a critical observation!
Sean McHugh

Technology And Video Games Make Kids Think Differently About Old Questions - Forbes - 0 views

  • I never limit my kids’ screen time. I do, however, require reading time, outdoor play time, and physical toy time. The difference between limiting screen time and requiring non-screen time is subtle, but substantial. It emphasizes the positive benefit of other activities rather than scolding the screen.
  • I spend a lot of time making sure my children don’t get too heavily absorbed in any one way of perceiving. I do this by paying enough attention to what games my kids are playing that I can ask them to switch games. That’s right, not all games are the same. Each one has unique narrative properties. Each one has particular mechanics that inadvertently teach a specific way of making meaning of the world. Gaming is not a singular way of being. Parenting gamer-kids is not just about monitoring the on/off switch.
  • Consider Minecraft. Like most kids these days, mine play it all the time. I’ve written about the good things my kids learn by playing. I love the free sandbox creativity. I think it strengthens a sense of systems thinking. But I’m also worried that so many kids develop an almost obsessive relationship to the game.
  •  
    "I never limit my kids' screen time. I do, however, require reading time, outdoor play time, and physical toy time. The difference between limiting screen time and requiring non-screen time is subtle, but substantial. It emphasizes the positive benefit of other activities rather than scolding the screen."
Sean McHugh

Teens, Technology and Friendships | Pew Research Center - 1 views

  • Social media and online gameplay are the most common digital venues for meeting friends
  • Along with texting, teens are incorporating a number of other devices, communication platforms and online venues into their interactions with friends
    • Sean McHugh
       
      The overlap between socialising within a gaming context and within the context of platforms like Facebook is an interesting one... Teen use of social media has many parallels with MMORPGs, I wonder how the time spent on these platforms compares... I'd bet the girls spend as much, if not more time on social media than the boys do, even combined with their gaming time.
  • Video games play a critical role in the development and maintenance of boys’ friendships
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Playing video games is not necessarily a solitary activity; teens frequently play video games with others.
  • video gameplay, particularly over online networks, is an important activity through which boys form and maintain friendships with others:
  • 38% of all teen boys share their gaming handle as one of the first three pieces of information exchanged when they meet someone they would like to be friends with
  • 78% of teen online gamers say when they play games online it makes them feel more connected to friends they already know
  • Some 76% of teens ages 13 to 17 use social media
  • Social media helps teens feel more connected to their friends’ feelings and daily lives, and also offers teens a place to receive support from others during challenging times.
  • But even as social media connects teens to friends’ feelings and experiences, the sharing that occurs on these platforms can have negative consequences. Sharing can veer into oversharing. Teens can learn about events and activities to which they weren’t invited, and the highly curated lives of teens’ social media connections can lead them to make negative comparisons with their own lives
  • 88% of teen social media users believe people share too much information about themselves on social media
  • Teens face challenges trying to construct an appropriate and authentic online persona for multiple audiences, including adults and peers. Consequently, many teens feel obligated to project an attractive and popular image through their social media postings.
    • Sean McHugh
       
      Again, classic gamification of social media, where the online persona becomes more like a 'role' than the true character of the person, the equivalent of social media becoming a 'massive, multiplayer online, role playing game', but with the critical difference that this is IRL, which is a little scary, Black Mirror crazy...!
  • Girls are more likely to use text messaging – while boys are more likely to use video games – as conduits for conversations with friends
Sean McHugh

What's leisure and what's game addiction in the 21st century? - 0 views

  • At what point does a leisure activity turn into an addiction?
    • Sean McHugh
       
      You can be sure the hours spent by many during this World Cup will easily reach the kind off of hours that could be accused of being problematic; especially if you include: watching it, talking about it, watching/listening to people talking about it, playing it, and mood changes as a result of it...
  • In the modern developed world, the dominant leisure activity is watching television, followed by other leisure activities like sports and entertaining friends. There’s no evidence that game playing is more dangerous than these other leisure activities
  • People watch television for far more time than they play video games. In the U.S., people watch an average of 4.5 hours of TV every day. That’s more time than they spend reading, relaxing, socializing, participating in sports, playing digital games and using computers – combined.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Consider a person who skips household and professional Sunday responsibilities to sit on the couch for hours watching pre-game shows; screaming at referees, coaches and players; and following post-game analysis – or who calls in sick to catch a game or breaks friendships over team rivalries. By the WHO’s criteria, this could qualify as “gaming disorder” – except that it’s about sports on TV, rather than video games.
  • Though the WHO warns against spending too much time gaming, that is not the way to measure addiction. Some studies demonstrate that some people who spend more time gaming actually exhibit fewer addictive behaviors than people who play less.
  • What people are looking for in their leisure time is a break, and just because they enjoy that break – and spend a fair amount of time doing it – doesn’t mean it’s an addiction.
Sean McHugh

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

  • 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
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • competitive, violent fantasy games contribute to the development of strong future leaders and citizens.
  •  
    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

Seven reasons why grown ups should play more video games | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

  • the last five years has seen a huge renaissance in video game design
  • video games remain astoundingly good value. A big mainstream release like Witcher 3 or Fifa 2017 will cost around £50 on console and less on PC, but they can provide hundreds of hours of entertainment
  • A lot of the people now making, producing and funding television and movies grew up playing video games – and that influence is becoming ever more obvious and important.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • how you cooperate on video game tasks is a pretty good indicator on how you will cope with real-life challenges
  • Games will break out of two-dimensional screens and into rooms, either through VR or AR, or through new combinations of TV and tablets. It’s possible that in twenty years, the idea of sitting down and just watching a narrative drama will seem outdated and anachronistic
  • a lot of the technologies that are going to affect our lives in the next decade are being tested and developed in the video game sphere.
  • Video games have become important testbeds for artificial intelligence research
  • it’s a way of meeting with your children in a domain they enjoy and feel comfortable. It lets them take the lead; it lets them show you stuff
  • Games are fun. They provide fascinating worlds to explore and take part in, they let us do incredible, sometimes terrible things without recourse. They test out intelligence and reaction; they posit weird futures and possibilities; they let us take control of lives and bodies that we could never own or experience. They are made by artists and visionaries, they provide moments of utter transfixing beauty and resonance. The glowing sunset over the city of Los Santos in GTA V, the swoop of a dragon over the plains of Skyrim; the desperate struggle to survive in the snowy wastelands of The Long Dark; the heart-wrenching power of friendship in Life is Strange – these are valid forms of escape and experience; they tell us things.
  • it is time to see video games alongside – and equal to – books, television and cinema as a popular imaginative medium. It is OK to play.
Sean McHugh

Kids who play video games do better as adults | Penelope Trunk Homeschooling - 0 views

  •  
    A three-year study of 491 middle school students found that the more children played computer games the higher their scores on a standardized test of creativity-regardless of race, gender, or the kind of game played.
Sean McHugh

10 Most Violent Video Games (and 10+ Alternatives) | Common Sense Media - 0 views

  •  
    "No parent wants to say "no" all the time. So we've rounded up 10 of the most violent video games out there -- explaining the details that put each one on our list -- as well as more than 10 that you can say "yes" to. Our reviewers play literally thousands of hours of video games a year -- they know games inside and out. But we're not trying to be sensationalistic, which is why we're offering less-violent alternatives. Our alternatives include three categories: less-violent games in the same genre as the violent game listed, less-violent games with a similar theme, and less-well-known but still great titles that play on the same system."
Sean McHugh

BBC News - A little video gaming 'linked to well-adjusted children' - 0 views

  •  
    "Playing video games for a short period each day could have a small but positive impact on child development, a study by Oxford University suggests. Scientists found young people who spent less than an hour a day engaged in video games were better adjusted than those who did not play at all."
Sean McHugh

Playing an Action Video Game Reduces Gender Differences in Spatial Cognition - 0 views

  •  
    Playing an action video game can virtually eliminate this gender difference in spatial attention and simultaneously decrease the gender disparity in mental rotation ability, a higher-level process in spatial cognition.
Sean McHugh

No, Fortnite Isn't Rotting Kids' Brains. It May Even Be Good for Them - Education Week - 0 views

  • we see little to be concerned about with the game
  • Granted, kids’ enthusiasm for Fortnite can be a little much, but we are old enough to remember Garbage Pail kids and have played Pokémon.
  • one of the best things educators can do is bystander training. That is, we can teach kids appropriate ways to respond when they see distrustful, harassing, or hateful behavior.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Can we really blame kids for being so taken by Fortnite? The game itself—a combination of army guys, building forts, and king-of-the-hill battles—would have taken place with sticks or toy guns in the vacant lots or wooded strands that are increasingly designed out of today’s suburban neighborhoods
  • look beyond the immediate content of the game (its characters and themes), and focus more intently on what kids are doing with it
  • Although there are no established links between games and violence, there are some obvious connections between gaming too much and wider problems
  • Wrangling over what extent games are the cause or the symptom somewhat misses the point; unhealthy game play can be a signal
  • Rather than focusing on what games kids are playing, we should attend more to who they are meeting and gaming with online, what type of talk they are engaged in, and what kinds of groups they are becoming a part of
  • just like offline ones
Sean McHugh

Screen Time? How about Creativity Time? - Mitchel Resnick - Medium - 0 views

  • Too often, designers of educational materials and activities simply add a thin layer of technology and gaming over antiquated curriculum and pedagogy
    • Sean McHugh
       
      I think because the designers of these apps are not educators and are therefore assuming that they often traditional education they experienced is the norm or at the very least is still a desirable outcome for the kids that they are designing their Apps for.
  • But I’m also sure that some students found it very discouraging and disempowering. And the activity put an emphasis on questions that can be answered quickly with right and wrong answers — certainly not the type of questions that I would prioritize in a classroom.
  • In many cases, the skeptics apply very different standards to new technologies than to “old” technologies. They worry about the antisocial impact of a child spending hours working on a computer, while they don’t have any concerns about a child spending the same time reading a book. They worry that children interacting with computers don’t spend enough time outside, but they don’t voice similar concerns about children playing musical instruments. I’m not suggesting that there are no reasons for concern. I’m just asking for more consistency.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • For kids growing up today, laptops and mobile phones aren’t high-tech tools — they’re everyday tools, just like crayons and watercolors.
  • Of course there’s a problem if children spend all their time interacting with screens — just as there would be a problem if they spent all their time playing the violin or reading books or playing sports. Spending all your time on any one thing is problematic. But the most important issue with screen time is not quantity but quality. There are many ways of interacting with screens; it doesn’t make sense to treat them all the same
  • Rather than trying to minimize screen time, I think parents and teachers should try to maximize creative time. The focus shouldn’t be on which technologies children are using, but rather what children are doing with them
Sean McHugh

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

  • 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,
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • by playing the right games, ones that encourage exploration and problem solving rather than just camping and sniping soldiers
Sean McHugh

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/07/us/video-games-child-sex-abuse.html - 0 views

  • Sexual predators and other bad actors have found an easy access point into the lives of young people: They are meeting them online through multiplayer video games and chat apps
  • Games are a common target, but predators are also finding many victims on social platforms like Instagram
  • Six years ago, a little over 50 reports of the crimes, commonly known as “sextortion,” were referred to the federally designated clearinghouse in suburban Washington that tracks online child sexual abuse. Last year, the center received over 1,500
    • Sean McHugh
       
      Most likely migrating from other haunts like playgrounds and shopping malls.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Almost every single teenage boy in America — 97 percent — plays video games, while about 83 percent of girls do
    • Sean McHugh
       
      And you can bet those percentages are equal or favouring girls when it comes to chat.
  • promote “healthy gaming habits” and develop students’ science and technology skills
  • Parents aren’t telling their kids at 6 years old, ‘Keep your clothes on online
  • It had nothing to do with gameplay
  • Parents aren’t telling their kids at 6 years old, ‘Keep your clothes on online,’” Mr. Halpert said. “But they need to.
  • Minecraft, said it planned to release software early next year that could recognize some forms of grooming and sextortion. The company said it would offer the software to other tech businesses free of charge
  • a 26-year-old Ohio man was charged with sexual exploitation after claiming to be 13 on Yubo and luring a 12-year-old girl, the authorities said
    • Sean McHugh
       
      I guess most systems are focused on the opposite, kids pretending they are adults...
  • But the solution many game developers and online safety experts return to is that parents need to know what their children are playing, and that children need to know what tools are available to them. Sometimes that means blocking users and shutting off chat functions, and sometimes it means monitoring the games as they are being played. “‘Literacy’ is the word I say a billion times a day
  • parents should react carefully when their children report encounters with online predators. Punishing the children — no more video games or social media, for example — could backfire by pushing them into even more dangerous places for their online activity.
Sean McHugh

How I connected with my autistic son through video games | Life and style | The Guardian - 0 views

  •  
    "We played together." A magnificent example of effective 21st Century parenting. 
Sean McHugh

When Gaming Is Good for You - WSJ.com - 1 views

  •  
    A three-year study of 491 middle school students found that the more children played computer games the higher their scores on a standardized test of creativity-regardless of race, gender, or the kind of game played.
Sean McHugh

Grand Theft Auto Is Today's Great Expectations | TIME.com - 0 views

  • are video games art? The short – and long – answer is yes. While it’s impossible to categorize all games easily (just as it is impossible to categorize all fiction, let along writing), there’s no question that gaming is a thriving form of participatory creative expression.
  • Ironically – and tellingly – people such as Schultz are repeating the same sorts of criticisms that dog all forms of popular culture in their early stages of developments. As novels became increasingly available to non-aristocratic readers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they were frequently criticized for impairing the morals of their then-mostly female readers by allowing them to imagine themselves in new and exciting worlds. Movies, comic books, and rock and roll – which like novels are often drenched in sex and violence – came in for exactly the same opprobrium. What good can come of allowing large numbers of people to imagine themselves transgressing conventional morality and playing different social roles for themelves, critics have asked for centuries.
  •  
    Ironically - and tellingly - people such as Schultz are repeating the same sorts of criticisms that dog all forms of popular culture in their early stages of developments. As novels became increasingly available to non-aristocratic readers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they were frequently criticized for impairing the morals of their then-mostly female readers by allowing them to imagine themselves in new and exciting worlds. Movies, comic books, and rock and roll - which like novels are often drenched in sex and violence - came in for exactly the same opprobrium. What good can come of allowing large numbers of people to imagine themselves transgressing conventional morality and playing different social roles for themelves, critics have asked for centuries.
Sean McHugh

Video Games Are The Perfect Way To Teach Math, Says Stanford Mathematician - Forbes - 0 views

  • the ability for a game to teach multiple skills simultaneously
  • does not build video games to ‘teach mathematics.’ Rather, we build instruments which you can play, and we design them so that when you play them, you cannot fail to learn about mathematics. Moreover, each single game can be used to deliver mathematical challenges of increasing sophistication.
  • I love the instrument analogy because I’m often explaining to my students why the Ancient Greeks saw math and music as part of the same realm–that area of experience that belonged to the god Apollo. Of course, the relationship has to do with intervals. But both math and music are also related to Apollo’s other domains, such as light, prophecy, healing, etc. The connection has been hard to understand from the rigidly measured viewpoint that has dominated Western thinking since Nietzsche inadvertently cemented the Apollonian into strict opposition with the Dionysian in The Birth Of Tragedy.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Everything about school and work in the twentieth century was designed to create and reinforce separate subjects, separate cultures, separate grades, separate functions, separate spaces for personal life, work, private life, public life, and all the other divisions. Then the internet came along. Now work increasingly means desktop computer. Fifteen years into the digital revolution, one machine has reconnected the very things–personal life, social life, work life, and even sexual life–that we’d spent the last hundred years putting into neatly separated categories, cordoned off in their separate spaces with as little overlap as possible.
1 - 20 of 43 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page