NCT Blogg 10_Essay Assignment

Young Children Benefit from Playing Computer Games

Children learning to play computer games and children playing computer games are learning a new literacy and new ways of thinking (Gee, 2003). So while a child is playing they are learning. I am talking about children as young as two to twelve years old. Children are actively learning and critically learning by exploratory and playful learning also stimulating their imaginations and social skills. By treating the learning process as an exploratory arena, play is enhanced as education. Children will actively learn by exploring, playful learning (Rodriguez, H 2006). For a child to play a computer game, firstly the child needs to adjust their behaviour according the rules, establishing limits of the game by cognitively responding to and learning from the game material, and interacts with the game strategies to bring together and reflect upon game elements which give the child an understanding of the game concepts (Walther, 2003).

Children playing computer games are extending their learning content, learning visual literacy encompassing images, symbols, graphs, diagrams, artifacts and many other significant visual symbols, along with traditional text. Children learn to recognize sounds, music, movement, body sensations giving children multiple exposure to different literacy beyond print and images. Exposure to multiple stimuli can mould a child’s cognitive strategies and increase their imagination, as documented in Business Week.
Computer games expand children's imaginations. The director of the Learning Center at the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Laboratory William D. Winn, told Business Week “High-tech children think differently from the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It's as though their cognitive strategies were parallel, not sequential."

Imagining fictional worlds are cued by graphics, colours sound inducing mood enhancement is the most obvious in projecting an imagined world, , text for dialogue, as text and audio.. Rules aid children into imagining fictional worlds while, providing challenges for the child to learn and gradually overcome (Juul, 2005). More than any other media, computer games have brought technology into children’s homes, capturing their imagination and engaging them in fantasy worlds.

Learning from games is very powerful in the formative years because children who grow up playing computer games a more social, more loyal to their teams, more sophisticated decision makers than those who did not play computer games in their formative years (Beck, J. C., & Wade, M., 2006). A child who plays computer games in their formative years are exposed to more stimuli and have developed wider cognitive strategies and perspectives to assist them in their decisions and problem solving skills.

Active leaning for children playing computer games, whether unconsciously or not involves understanding and operating within the game, involving experiencing the game world in new ways by situating meanings to elements within the game. By elements I mean the words, images, symbols and forming new affiliations. Experience, affiliations and preparation for future learning are involved in active learning. Engagement with various computer games gives children a wider experience to associate content with meanings.

“Elements in the content of Pikmin for example, a yellow Pikmin do not have just one general meaning of significance in the game world. Learners must learn to situate different meanings for such elements within different domains” (Gee, 2003). For the child to play the game, the child must understand and produce situated meanings in the semiotic domain of the game and games like it. Critical learning for children within a game involves consciously attending, reflecting, critiquing and manipulating within the game.

As the game progresses it increases in difficulty giving the child the opportunity to think differently and problem solve, allowing for critique, new strategies, opportunities for reflection on errors and learning, beginning the process of critical learning and thinking. The learning potential from engaging in computer games for young children involving active learning and critical learning can lead to critique, innovation and good learning practices in engaging in society. Good games and good being the operative word will facilitate active and critical learning and thinking. People around the child, other players and non players, perhaps parents who encourage, reflective thinking and actions will aid that process (Gee, 2003).

Actively and critically learning within a computer game assists the children in growing up and developing their relationship to different cultural worlds, giving them multiple resources and challenges they can use to develop their cognitive, social, and physical skills (Fromme, 2003).

Enjoyment motivates young children to understand and learn, albeit not obvious at times. Learning experiences within distinctive social practices of computer games and gaining resources prepare children for future learning and problem solving within and related domains. Children willingly put in the time to be challenged in a computer games they enjoy.

While having fun and being entertained, playing with adventure, problem solving skills, learning to think differently for different games, computer games encourage children to learn and think. Children are enticed to try, encouraged to put in effort and are rewarded with achieve meaningful success when they apply the effort. Children learning on all levels of skill are rewarded from the beginning, according to their level, effort and increasing ability within the learners ongoing achievements, practicing what they are learning and bettering their skills (Gee, 2003).

Playing computer games does not lead to social isolation. There is no evidence suggesting the need to be alarmed about children playing computer games. Even Children who spend a considerable time often and who have a general interest in playing computer games, do not necessarily give up other activities and interests like outdoor and sport activities. In most cases it appears to compliment existing peer relationships. Spending time with friends for the majority of children remains the favoured activity in leisure time. The allure of interactive qualities of computer technology are quite attractive in situations when children are alone or unable to play outside because of the weather (Fromme, 2003). Concerns that computers would isolate children were alleviated by research. Computers serve as a catalyst for social interaction (Squire).

Children who are heavily involved with computer games often show an outstanding level of sophistication in their ways of thinking and talking about learning. Games provide incentives and practice in developing learning skills with clear meaningful goals, multiple goal structures and scoring to give feedback on their progress, multiple difficulty levels to adjust the game difficulty to learner skill, random elements of surprise, an emotionally appealing fantasy and metaphor that is related to game skills. Cognitive research suggests that playing computer games can be an important to developing the necessary building blocks to attain computer literacy because it enhances children's ability to read and visualize images in three-dimensional space and track multiple images simultaneously (Subhahmanyam, 2000).

Young children applying themselves to the technology available to them today, in the form of computer games is “developmentally appropriate,” because they are a medium of communication and creativity. Young children show comfort and confidence in using software. Young children can follow picture directions and use situational and visual cues to understand and think about their activities, which flows and leads into other computer applications with ease. Typing on a keyboard is a source of pride and fun for children, not anxiety or fear. Computer games serve as a catalyst for social interaction not isolation. The input of information from computer games is knowledge and that knowledge gives children choices, and advances their creativity. The applications and software that young children learn from computer games gives them the confidence to approach other applications and software with transparency and openness developing their active learning and critical thinking processes.


References

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