From Playing Video Games Offers Learning Across Life Span, Say Studies

In one paper, Fordham University psychologist Fran C. Blumberg, PhD,
and Sabrina S. Ismailer, MSED, examined 122 fifth-, sixth- and
seventh-graders’ problem-solving behavior while playing a video game
that they had never seen before to show that playing video games can
improve cognitive and perceptual skills.

…

Findings from the student studies confirmed previous research on
effects of playing violent games: Those playing violent games were more
hostile, less forgiving and believed violence to be normal compared to
those who played nonviolent games. Players of “prosocial” games got
into fewer fights in school and were more helpful to other students.

Check out this article - Could Violent Video Games Reduce Rather Than Increase Violence? - for more information on this topic. It is highly debated and studies have been inconclusive; contrary to what this article implies.

Other studies involving students showed that those who played more
entertainment games did poorer in school and were at greater risk for
obesity.

Correlation = causation? Hm… basic science training fail.

A study of 33 laparoscopic surgeons found that those who played
video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures and
made 37 percent fewer errors compared to those who did not play video
games, said Gentile.

Advanced video game skill and experience are significant predictors
of suturing capabilities, the researchers found, even after controlling
for sex, years of medical training and number of laparoscopic surgeries
performed.

A second study of 303 laparoscopic surgeons (82 percent men; 18
percent women) also showed that surgeons who played video games
requiring spatial skills and hand dexterity and then performed a drill
testing these skills were significantly faster at their first attempt
and across all 10 trials than the surgeons who did not the play video
games first.

Not too surprising that practicing fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination leads to better fine motor skill and hand-eye coordination!

“The big picture is that there are several dimensions on which games
have effects, including the amount they are played, the content of each
game, what you have to pay attention to on the screen, and how you
control the motions,” said Gentile. “This means that games are not
‘good’ or ‘bad,’ but are powerful educational tools and have many
effects we might not have expected they could.”

They are definitely powerful. They are definitely educational tools. They are definitely feared by many in the media, and many parents.

In another paper, researchers Constance Steinkuehler, PhD, and Sean
Duncan, MA, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison looked at how
game-based learning can supplement textbooks and science labs in
fostering scientific thinking. They analyzed a random sample of nearly
2,000 discussion posts in November 2006 where participants talked about
various game-related topics.

Using codes based on national benchmarks for scientific literacy,
discussions of the multiplayer online game World of Warcraft were
examined to see what types of conversations took place, such as social
bantering versus problem-solving, that classified as scientific
reasoning. The game set in a fantasy world had players of various
classes hunt, gather, battle and craft in order to strengthen or move
their character up in “levels.” Characters move faster when they work
together.

The codes addressed a different aspect of scientific thinking,
including reasoning using systems and models, understanding feedback,
predicting and testing and using math to investigate a problem.

Scientific thinking can be learned in virtual worlds, said Duncan.
The majority of participants (86 percent) shared their knowledge to
solve problems and more than half the participants (58 percent) used
systematic and evaluative processes indicative of scientific reasoning.

“These forums illustrate how sophisticated intellectual practices to
improve game play mimic actual scientific reasoning,” said Duncan.
“Gamers are openly discussing their strategies and thinking, creating
an environment in which informal scientific reasoning practices are
being learned by playing these online video games.”

Don’t have anything to say about this, I just thought it was fascinating.

Well, he’s back. His new show, “Stuff Happens” airs on Planet Green, a new Discovery Channel offering. The first episode centered on breakfast and the impact that various breakfast items have on food supply, the economy and the environment. It was fascinating and kept the kids interested! More info here: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/stuff-happens/stuff-happen-details.html

It can be hard sometimes to figure out good books to recommend to your kids, especially when they read as much as mine do! These books have been evaluated and chosen by children themselves, rather than just what some adult thinks they might enjoy.
http://www.reading.org/resources/tools/choices_childrens.html

It can be hard sometimes to figure out good books to recommend to your kids, especially when they read as much as mine do! These books have been evaluated and chosen by children themselves, rather than just what some adult thinks they might enjoy.
http://www.reading.org/resources/tools/choices_childrens.html

Thanks to ILearnTechnology for pointing out this site -  Lookybook where you can read quality picture books online in their entirety. Students can read, rate, review, and save books to a bookshelf.  If they like them, you can purchase them as well!  Very cool.

Don’t forget to check this month’s Cable in the Classroom guide to see what you want to watch/record. Here’s what I don’t want to miss.

Ancient Mysteries on A&E
Digging for the Truth History Channel
Gold! on the History Channel
The King’s Highway: El Camino Real on the History Channel
Lincoln 200 Years on C-SPAN
Sports Figures on ESPNC
Biography - Charles Darwin on A&E
Forecast Earth Hurricanes on the Weather Channel
How the Earth Was Made on the History Channel
The New Explorers on A&E
The Wrath of God on the History Channel
American Politics/Road to the Whitehouse 2008 on C-SPAN

I am frequently frustrated by the lack of real science that kids can do. Ben, my 9 y.o., is fascinated with all things science and math. I have done what I can to support that interest; accelerated his learning; bought him a professional grade microscope; sent him to a Spring Break Science Camp; bought and read him lots of books; etc. Hoping it would offer some challenge, I purchased Real Chemistry 4 Kids (in addition to the fairly rigorous K12 science we were already doing). Although it was better than most books for kids, it still was fairly mild. He wants to be a chemist. He wants to do real science.

Well, today in reading Greg Laden’s scienceblogs.com post Home Chemistry: A New Guide for Hobbyists and Home Schoolers The post is about some new book that looks interesting, and I might buy it (if I do I’ll use his Amazon link).

There was a comment listed on this post by Dawn at Day by Day Discoveries that mentioned a book floating around on the torrent sites called The Golden Book of
Chemistry Experiments (from the 60’s) that embodies the old spirit of
chemistry for kids. Wow! Not that I would recommend downloading torrents of copyrighted material, but in this case I make an exception (in what I will recommend). I found the book on thepiratebay.com and is a must-have for any science buffs out there.

Part 1 - Everything I need to know I learned on Google
Part 2 - Everything I need to know I learned in school

On the other other hand…

After reading Part 2 (above) of this accidental mini-series, my brother asked if I was advocating unschooling. At the end of part 2, I said:

It’s not a matter of ensuring that specific material is covered;
reasonably intelligent people interacting frequently with their kids
will cover more ‘content’ than a kid would learn in public school
anyway. It *is* a matter of not neglecting the child’s potential,
interests, and capacity for learning, staying on your toes and one step
ahead, and responding appropriately to questions and curiosity.

I want to clarify my clarification post. Unschooling is not well-defined. John Holt, who coined the term, used it to mean getting rid of the mentality that certain things need to be learned at a certain time and in a certain manner, and just enjoying learning for what it is. He advocated leaving school, and not recreating school at home. He advocated following kids’ interests and introducing new interests. He was not against classes, school, or formal learning, as long as they were chosen by the individual. He did not advocate, as some current unschooling advocates do, accepting children watching tv, playing video games, and doing little else for a year or more at a time. He did not advocate rationalizing uneducated children by comparing them to the lowest common denominator - well, some kids go to school for 12 years and still know as little as my kids so I must be doing ok!

I am not advocating unschooling at all. I think it is an excellent option for some people and a horrible option for most people. To unschool successfully, a family needs lots of time, energy, intelligence, interest, dedication, and patience. All of these must be present for successful unschooling (successful in the sense that the child ends up educated, healthy, and with a good relationship with his/her family). The average American family, even homeschooling family, does not have all of these qualities. However, for those who have what is necessary, I think unschooling is the ideal option. How’s that for a wishy washy answer.

As I was thinking more about what a person needs to be mentally stimulated, healthy, and satisfied (my definition of educated), I came up with what I think are the key ingredients to a satisfying intellectual life for adults and children. I started writing my list, and noticed that most of them seemed to start with a “C”. Maybe because I was raised by a pastor and pastors like making lists that start with the same letter or are otherwise easy to remember, I decided to make them all start with a C. That worked better for some than for others, but I wound up with “The 7 Cs of Cerebral Satisfaction” hehe. I’m serious though… the more of these that I accomplish in a day, the more satisfied I am.

Here they are:

• Contemplating - separating oneself from activity in order to focus inwardly. For the spiritual/religious, this could be a time of prayer, but a time of quiet, listening prayer, not of talking incessantly to God. To the non-religious, this is just a time to quiet oneself and to be aware of what is working and not working in one’s life and attitudes. Journaling can be very helpful here for those who can express themselves better on paper.
• Conditioning - physical exercise has a huge impact on our attitudes, emotions, and our intellect!
• Connecting - our relationships need to be satisfying in order for us to be satisfied. Keeping a connection with our friends and families is critical.
• Concentrating - something that requires mental effort. This could include things like puzzles (logic, word puzzles, mazes, etc.), memorization, problem solving, playing a difficult game.
• Creating - actually producing something. This could be building, sewing, writing, drawing, painting, playing music, creating film, photography, cooking, scripting, designing…
• Consuming - reading, watching tv, researching, playing a game that requires little to no concentration.
• Contributing - helping someone with something, housework, pet care, volunteering, cooking (a two-fer).

Part 2 of Everything I need to know I learned on Google

On the other hand…

At the end of “Everything I need to know I learned on Google” I said,

I love it when something comes up multiple times and connections are
made.  It doesn’t just excite me, it also makes their eyes light up and
we relish the knowledge together!  It makes me all the more aware of
connections that are happening all the time that I miss because I don’t
know enough.  If we had not just read about scurvy we would have
completely missed that connection.  If we had not been “doing” history
we would not have been reading about Da Gama and the age of
exploration.  If we were not homeschooling, there would be no way to
find those connections with what they are learning.  The more knowledge
we expose ourselves and our kids to, the more connections can be made,
and knowledge will grow exponentially.  The more we wait for knowledge
to find us, the less likely it is to make itself at home.

I don’t want to leave it at that. It kind of sounds like I’m saying the only way to find these connections and to build knowledge exponentionally is to do schoolwork.  This couldn’t be further from the truth!  Anyone who went to school long enough to get a diploma or a degree or two would likely find that thought hilarious if they thought about it for a minute - everything I need to know I learned in school?  With the possible exception of the medical field and maybe some of the math and science fields, I would argue that the large majority of successful people learned almost none of what they needed to know in school.  I learned far more that needed to be *un*learned than I did useful stuff! 

Everything that I use in my work today has been learned through years of experience, independent research, experimentation, and voracious reading.  I know (and use) a lot of information about education, math education, cognitive science, technology in education… did I learn any of it in the pursuit of my BA, credential or MA?  Nope.  I learned it on my own when I was interested.

I went to drivers education and drivers training.  Is that where I learned how to drive?  Nope.  I read the DMV booklet a few times to pass the written test.  My poor mom and dad had to risk certain death allowing me to practice driving in their own vehicles so that I could learn how to position the car, drive defensively, follow the laws and courtesies of the road, etc.

I love computers, and really enjoy web design, photo and video editing, and troubleshooting other peoples’ computer problems.  The few computer courses I was required to take in college were always a few years behind what I already knew how to do.

I play the piano.  Not exceptionally well, but I play.  I got an electronic keyboard for Christmas one year, along with a few beginner books, and learned to play.  Occasionally my dad would sit with me and guide me, give me tips, etc., and he also showed me the wonders of using chords.  He could be considered a piano teacher, but purely on my request.  Wait, that doesn’t count!  One of the reasons I picked up playing the piano fairly easily was because I had learned how to read music already in school.  I played the clarinet in the school band for a few years, so was already very capable of reading music.  Something useful I learned in school! 

I parent.  Pretty well, I think.  Nobody taught me how, certainly not my own parents (sorry mom and dad!), although they did teach me quite a few things that I did *not* want to do!  They parented, but I parent completely differently.  I read books, talk to people, read blogs, etc. and figure out how I want to do things.

I’m good at math, up through algebra at least.  I’m good at helping others learn math.  I learned basic math in school.  I learned more basic math in a college math education course (like, why we ‘borrow’ and ‘carry’, for example).  I got As in the courses I needed to finish my degrees.  When I got my first teaching job, and it was teaching algebra, I had to take the textbook I would be using and relearn all of it so that I could teach it well.

I know how to sew (not very well), to knit (very badly!), the rules of lots of games, the lyrics to hundreds of songs, the storylines to thousands of books, movies, and plays, how to bake, how to follow a recipe, how to care for a pet, how to ride a bike, how to roller and ice skate, when to go to the dr., lots of constellations, how to find the directions without a compass, most of the states, lots of countries, a little bit of drums and guitar, a lot about Mac vs PC, how to run Cub Scout and Boy Scout packs and dens, and most importantly, how to make my kids feel important, respected, and loved!

Of all of the things that I enjoy and pursue in my life today, almost none of it came through formal education, and certainly there’s nothing that I couldn’t have learned outside of formal education.  I bet the same is true of you!

Homeschooling can provide the best opportunities for learning that are to be had.  Why? Because you are not restricted to a room full of children who know as little as you, with one teacher who may or may not know as little as you but won’t have much time to share what s/he does know because s/he has to maintain control, follow the bell schedule, complete the paperwork, cover the standards, and make sure you can pass the multiple choice test.  This is a very stifling environment for the expansion of knowledge!  Of course, it is an efficient way to pass the masses through a cursory bit of education, prepare them to be workers, and hopefully the majority come out able to read and do basic math!

Homeschooling *can* provide the best opportunities for learning that are to be had.  That doesn’t mean it always does.  And it doesn’t mean it has to happen through the same methods used by schools.  There is a lot of education research out there that talks about the best ways to teach children.  Most of the time, the strategies that are recommended are based on either A) the strategies that students who are good at the subject use (i.e., good readers do this, so let’s teach everyone how to do this; good problem solvers do that, so let’s teacher everyone how to do that); or B) the strategy that helped the highest percentage of students answer the highest percentage of multiple choice questions correctly.  This is very useful information for people trying to create a product or service that will effectively reach the majority of students.  Not as useful for someone living and working and learning with one or two (or more) students who don’t have anything to prove, but have lots to learn. 

That’s not to say that education research is not useful for homeschoolers.  Cognitive science and learning how people learn and how people forget and how to learn more and better is always useful information!  It’s even more important to keep that in perspective and not let it dictate the way one lives as a homeschooling family.  In this environment, where the whole world is available as a resource and real life is all around us, there is no need to create an artificial learning environment. 

A child who has a parent able and willing to observe and assist with their spelling and grammar as they go about daily life does not need spelling lists and spelling tests (which, according to the research, do not produce better spellers anyway).  A child who has a parent ready and able to read to them and to provide them with books, and to discuss those books and other stories with them does not need a formal lesson in literature with a worksheet to learn literary analysis, character, setting, plot, etc.  Those are artificial constructs for teachers who cannot manage meaningful conversation with 30 kids.  A child who is provided and surrounded with interesting books, software, websites, timelines, movies, tv shows, materials about real history and real science does not need to experience those subjects in bite size chunks spread over 12 years with no real depth and lots of repetition.  A child who is introduced to and familiar with numbers and patterns and how people use math in daily life does not need to spend 4 years learning place value, one power of ten at a time, and 3 years learning long division with one more digit each time, and 4 years studying fractions without ever figuring out what they really are.  I truly believe (and it has been proven, both in Sudbury schools and in public schools in years past) that students who are exposed to math in daily life can learn all of elementary math in less than 6 months once they are preteens or teens (or sooner if they are motivated).

Granted, using a school-like curriculum is an easy, thought-free way to ensure that a broad array of topics are presented to your kids.  But does the cost of schooling this way outweigh the gains?  It depends a lot on the personality and learning style of the kid, the motivation and style of the parent, and frankly, the capacity for and interest in learning of both the parent and the children.  Some kids come away from worksheets, drills and disjointed lessons with some new information and perhaps a new interest in something that can be pursued after the lessons are done.  Others come away with a disdain for anything remotely related to school, negative feelings about themselves, and a lack of motivation to learn anything.  Most come away with a mixture of the two.  The alternative, not using school-like curricula, requires a great deal of focus, dedication, insight and patience on the part of the homeschooling parent.  It’s not a matter of ensuring that specific material is covered; reasonably intelligent people interacting frequently with their kids will cover more ‘content’ than a kid would learn in public school anyway.  It *is* a matter of not neglecting the child’s potential, interests, and capacity for learning, staying on your toes and one step ahead, and responding appropriately to questions and curiosity.

That is where connections will be found and cemented.  I (and probably Ben) don’t remember the name of the explorer we were reading about when we first came across scurvy (in fact, I had to look it up when I wrote the first part of this and it was only a couple of days later); I will never forget what the vitamin deficiency is or where that vitamin can be found.

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Being fascinated with learning and education, I read a lot of articles, research, stories and blogs about education, cognitive science, and learning from every perspective. 

My mental image of learning (which is based in cognitive science research mixed with my imagination) is this.  Each of us has our own tree of knowledge.  Our knowledge is organized into branches, which split into many directions (this is obviously simplistic, as our knowledge connects to each other too; imagine a giant spider web of neurons surrounding the tree so the knowledge is connected entirely).

Every piece of information we come across needs to fit into our tree. If we can make sense of it,
it will build on a part of our tree to make it even bigger.  If we can’t make sense of it, it just drops with nowhere to hang.

There is a school of thought that the knowledge we have is not nearly as important as knowing how to learn, and knowing how to research.  That we can find everything we could possibly want to know on Google anyway, so stuffing it all into our brains is pointless.  This school of thought is popular among many educators in schools and universities across the country, many homeschoolers and unschoolers, and many other random people.  The problem with this theory is twofold: first, if we don’t know about something, we don’t know how much we don’t know, and therefore would have no reason to look it up.  Secondly, when learning something new it is much easier to have somewhere to hang it than to have to go back and construct the branches leading up to that piece of knowledge at the same time as constructing the new knowledge.

One of the awesome things about homeschooling is the ability to use the child and teacher’s trees together to build knowledge in both.  The whole point of this post was to share this story that happened a few days ago.  Ben and I were reading his history lesson together.  We were reading about the Age of Exploration and Vasco da Gama’s first trip to India, on which many men got scurvy and died.  Ben asked what scurvy was.  I said that I wasn’t sure, but that I knew it was a deficiency of some vitamin, and that it was common among pirates and explorers and others who spend a lot of time on boats, because of the types of foods they could bring with them. 

That wasn’t a good enough answer (especially since I didn’t know which vitamin they were deficient in), so we went to wikipedia (first link upon googling scurvy).  There we found that scurvy was caused by a deficiency in vitamin C, due to the inability to keep fresh fruits and vegetables on the ships.  We clicked on vitamin C and there was a detailed chart of foods containing vitamin C and how much vitamin C they contained.  This, of course, was fascinating to Ben because anything that quantifies or enumerates things and puts them in lists or charts really attracts him.  We looked at pictures of strange fruits, vegetables and berries we’d never heard of.  We read all about pomegranates because we have talked about them before and Ben has never seen or had one.  We looked at the strange meats you’d have to eat to get your vitamin C from meat rather than plants.  Finally, we went back to the history lesson.

So what’s my point?  A couple days later we were reading My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George, which was Ben’s novel selection for literature.  It was deep winter and Sam, who was living in the Catskill mountains wilderness using his survival skills, began to develop symptoms of scurvy.  The book never mentioned scurvy, it just talked about the symptoms he was experiencing, dizziness, fatigue, etc., and the fact that there were no greens to be found.  Hmmm…. scurvy!  Sam did not know that he had scurvy, but he found himself gorging on the livers of the birds that he ate for awhile until his symptoms abated. 

I love it when something comes up multiple times and connections are made.  It doesn’t just excite me, it also makes their eyes light up and we relish the knowledge together!  It makes me all the more aware of connections that are happening all the time that I miss because I don’t know enough.  If we had not just read about scurvy we would have completely missed that connection.  If we had not been “doing” history we would not have been reading about Da Gama and the age of exploration.  If we were not homeschooling, there would be no way to find those connections with what they are learning.  The more knowledge we expose ourselves and our kids to, the more connections can be made, and knowledge will grow exponentially.  The more we wait for knowledge to find us, the less likely it is to make itself at home.

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