Reaching the "Next Level"
Can’t write much this week—Sue and I are taking a little long-overdue holiday away from home and if she catches me writing here, well . . .
But I did want to highlight a clever post Beth made last week. She writes,
“Here's an idea: have kids do reports on video games every day in school for years; keep logs on them and take them apart, diagram their dialogue structure, make everyone in the class work at the exact same pace (too slow or too fast) and generally take all the 'fun' out of the games.
You might find the kids turn to books for enjoyment instead of those 'boring' (frustrating) computer games!”
Whether or not it’s possible to ruin video games for kids in this way, I think we can all recognize that books do sometimes die an ignominious death in our nation’s classrooms.
And while they certainly don’t always get ruined in school—there are a lot of great teachers making books exciting for kids and turning them into readers—it does happen. It happened to me back when I was a student, and it’s happening to thousands of kids every single day.
And it’s exactly why, as parents, we can’t just assume that our kids are going to learn a love of books in school, and why we have to undertake this particular mission ourselves.
Fortunately, it’s a rewarding one . . . and one that’s very, very do-able.
More soon,
JP
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I think we should still have fun video games, but there needs to be a balance. I love to play video games...I'm even typing this comment on a Wii now...but I still find an hour or two to read everyday. I think everyone can find just a few minutes to spare to read a book.
I've recently acquired a "Playstation 3". Interesting device, but I'm proud of myself because I still find books much more entertaining. I told my parents, "There, see? You haven't lost me completely (Yet)." But unfourtunatly, this doesn't mean that my 2 younger sibilings haven't been wasting their life in front of the TV screen but I'll fix that.
yes I actaully was wondering if your wife Sue had any relation to your stories. Wondering what connections do you make with your life and your stories. This with help with my paper greatly. Thanks!
My father is a high school anatomy teacher (and avid reader) who gets more and more disgusted with each passing year. Every parent/teacher conference he sits through, at least five parents complain about how tired their child is, how sometimes the parent thinks school is just too overwhelming. And when my father asks about the student's bed time, the response is, "Well, I don't know. He/she usually goes to bed after I do!"
"And what time is that?" my father will ask.
"About eleven," comes the response.
"And why is your child up past you?"
"Well, he or she is on the computer, talking with friends, or playing games."
These are adults who are inevitably parenting kids who spend too much time playing computer games or chatting online and not enough time trying to get good grades. Perhaps if more parents took an active interest in their children's lives, more books would be read, better grades could be achieved, and scores on the latest video/computer games would decrease.
I love it! You are sooooooooo right.
I have to say, I have a nine year old step-daughter who watches me read books by the day! She always makes comments how much I read and how big the books are...over the past two years I have seen this wonderful child start picking up books to read just for fun. I am so proud of her and her new love for reading. (Although I do have to say that they have to read a lot of books for school and AR points and all.) I really pray that her love for reading continues through the years until her adulthood!
Stephanie
My daughters love computer games, but they play them together and over the phone with their friends. I object when they take over my laptop AND the other two computers AND the phone, but ah well.
They watch me reading instead of watching TV (currently over 50 books this winter), and we read apart throughout the day and together at night. My reluctant/learning disabled reader was spurred on into reading so she could read the needed quest items for a game.
I don't think it's a question of making video games dull. We should just give kids exciting books to read, and read to them more. Admittedly, we homeschool, so our reading time today was taken up with Maximum Ride, not Lord of the Flies...
I don't think this has to be an either/or proposition. I don't play video games, but my boyfriend does, and he has always been an avid reader as well. He describes to me many video games coming out that are quite narrative and character-based (granted, this doesn't seem to have trickled down to games appropriate for kids yet) and the best games out there are exploring the potential of becoming a medium that is almost an interactive "cinematic" experience, all the while incorporating literary and other, more "high culture" references. Incidentally, I am most certainly NOT talking about the "Grand Theft Auto" school of games, which I find appalling.
I do agree with the quote above, arguing that kids should be made to write reports and analyze the games that they play. Rather than take the fun out of games entirely, however, I think that this would not only get parents (and educators) more involved in their child's leisure time activities, but would help to focus the kids on what it is they like about the games they play, what they would change, and thereby stimulate their interest in "better" games. It would also help develop their own writing skills, which I think we can all agree would be a wonderful thing for the kids.
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