While I was reading Henry Jenkins' paper, "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century", in particular the example he uses of SimLife, I started thinking about why the series of Sim games are so attractive to young people even though they are highly educational. Typically speaking, for the most part kids don't enjoy schooling as much as, say, playing basketball with their friends. I am no expert on parenting or teaching, but I would say it's hard to get younger kids enthused about learning.
I remember when I was younger I wanted to be like my hero, my Dad. I would always try to do whatever I could to be like him; buy candy cell phones and pretend to be on conference calls, fix my bike with Fisher Price toolkits, and so on. In sort of the same way, my sister loved to play dress up and Barbies. My point is, kids want to be part of the real "grown-up" life; SimLife and other similar strategy games allow them to do this on their computers. The cool part is, its really educational.
Although I never really got into this particular game series, I was for a period a fan of Roller Coaster Tycoon. Now it's a little bit different from SimCity or SimLife, but it still provides many valuable lessons for kids that can be applied to the real world later on in life. For example, financial management. Before you buy any new roller coasters, you need to know that you have enough funds to make this purchase and still manage the rest of the park. Who knew an Amusement Park themed computer game could help teach the basics of personal finance?
I remember when I was younger I wanted to be like my hero, my Dad. I would always try to do whatever I could to be like him; buy candy cell phones and pretend to be on conference calls, fix my bike with Fisher Price toolkits, and so on. In sort of the same way, my sister loved to play dress up and Barbies. My point is, kids want to be part of the real "grown-up" life; SimLife and other similar strategy games allow them to do this on their computers. The cool part is, its really educational.
Although I never really got into this particular game series, I was for a period a fan of Roller Coaster Tycoon. Now it's a little bit different from SimCity or SimLife, but it still provides many valuable lessons for kids that can be applied to the real world later on in life. For example, financial management. Before you buy any new roller coasters, you need to know that you have enough funds to make this purchase and still manage the rest of the park. Who knew an Amusement Park themed computer game could help teach the basics of personal finance?
1 comment:
That is an excellent point. While I never really played Rollercoaster Tycoon, I did hit up The Sims once or twice and really enjoyed it. It's cool that some companies can infuse education into their products (possibly without even meaning to).
I wonder what I've learned from Halo 3...?
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