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Gaming and Education

A few folks have asked me recently for examples of computer games that are educational. I asked Aaron Schmidt of walking paper if there were some good ones and he suggested these as a small sample:
Dimenxian – Learn Math or Die Trying. Homework just got Hard
PeaceMaker – Be the Prime Minister of Israel or Palestinian leader
Disaffected – Be a Kinko’s employee
Darfur is Dying – Prevent genocide
Food Force – Prevent hunger
Peter the Packet – Play the role of a packet of data on the web.
See Aaron’s full post here. These might be useful examples to counteract the prevalent opinion among some sectors about the role of gaming. Nothing like an informed opinion!
BTW, at ALA a few young adult librarians told me that violent, first person shooter type games were only about 10% of games and 15-20% of revenue/profit. More gaming is of the healthy variety than the media attention would suggest. Also, the average gamer is 30 years old according to Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame.
Stephen

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Posted on: July 15, 2006, 10:07 pm Category: Uncategorized

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  1. steven bell said

    I worked in a public library for a few years back in the early 90s to help fund my doctoral program expenses. I recall the library had quite a few computer games back then – Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego just to mention two. It’s odd that you have folks asking for computer games that are educational since such things have existed back in the day of the Apple II and probably even before that. Granted, now they’re played on xBox, Nitendo DS and PSP – but I don’t think what passes for an educational video game these days is all that different from those games from way back.

  2. Not only is the average gamer about 30, but a Pew survey of college gamers released in 2003 also found that 60% of computer gamers were female. We forget that there are rather a lot of computer games out there including a whole slew of massively multiplayer online card and little board game sites. I was recently speaking with a librarian who was telling me that she (and her family) play on this site where you are a pirate or something. You have to get a “crew” together to have enough people to sail a large ship by completing little games. Wow. Never knew about that because I was too busy over on another game with some people where we got together to complete raids in a fps. Not so different…
    Also, don’t discount “popular” games for educational purposes. Civilization IV (and other world builders) is incredible, and I think Black & White could be used for some great ethical conversations.