Your Name Here, Ph.D., PSP

Maybe there's more to computer games than shooting people and blowing things up. A recent Yahoo! News story quotes a Wisconsin professor who believes that schools should increasingly turn to video games as an engaging and mentally-stimulating teaching tool. He believes that game-based instruction will help to develop the type of innovative, quick-thinking workers that the New Economy needs.

Some MC101s were a little dubious about this. One student pointed out that encouraging students to play video games could fuel addictions, most likely to games without educational content. Another student said that games with any real educational content will simply be shunned by young people. A third student said that video games usually command total concentration and therefore aren't very good at teaching multitasking.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #11