MMOG Madness!
In a Fox News segment on the dangers of kids losing their “moral compass” through playing online games, David responds to the fears of online kids gone wild by suggesting the ways adults can encourage children to play video games responsibly. As he explains in How Computer Games Help Children Learn, the most important things parents can do is play and talk about video games with their children.
David Williamson Shaffer in the Rocky Mount Telegram
David was recently interviewed for “Got Game?” [link removed by source], an article that ran in North Carolina’s Rocky Mount Telegram newspaper. In it, he argues that video games can teach children specific skills and give them motivation to solve real-world problems. “Learning how to play the games first might even inspire people to try new activities when they see the tasks are more possible than they thought,” David said.
Straw Men
I just posted a comment to a piece on the Chronicle of Higher Education Review website. Mark Bauerlein, author of the recent controversial book “The Dumbest Generation,” argues (in a post titled “Web Reactionaries”) that:
Game Scientist David Williamson Shaffer believes that computers alter ‘the way people think in the digital age,’ and he rates their advent with ‘the development of language itself.’
<-snip->
If Web 2.0 marks something fundamentally, radically different in the nature of knowledge and the means of intelligence, and if the young are the lead carriers of the revolution, then the ‘kids-are-alright, everything’s-okay, stop-the-handwringing’ response doesn’t apply. If a revolution is in play, one that reaches down into the hard wiring of thought, it’s not a version of the same old thing. And if the critical reaction to it addresses aspects specific to Web 2.0 and teens’ standard use of it, let’s not pooh-pooh it with easy comparisons to Socrates and the fear of writing.
And my reply:
Half the world in his hands
McCain, Analog Candidate, a recent piece on the New York Times website, and the 200+ reader comments attached to it, explores whether computer proficiency should be considered when we evaluate presidential candidates. The topic is a story because when John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, describes himself as a ‘Neanderthal’ when it comes to computers, he isn’t just being self-deprecating. He’s being honest: buying tickets before going to the movies is, to John McCain, ‘amazing.’ Those of us in technology fields, or anyone under 40 for that matter, can chortle at his expense.
