For better or worse, video games have power to teach

Published 9:00 pm Monday, February 9, 2004

A friend’s 13-year-old son took on a middle school project that lasted several weeks. It was a block class project, so it drew from many different topic areas.

It seemed to take all of his spare time.

My friend watched his son’s progress on the project whenever he could, although it was always from a little distance. He could tell that each youngster, including his son, would take a segment of the project home to study, and then they put their different parts together.

Judging from the students’ intense involvement with the project and with each other, he thought the project design must be ingenious.

Individuals would take their parts as far as they could and then contribute their individual pieces to the whole. Sometimes they got together over the phone and sometimes with that instant messaging over the Internet that can irritate adults with its lack of punctuation, capitals and syntax.

But always after, and only after they got together, would the next step in the project become clear. There would be a buzz of consulting among the youngsters and then they would retreat to their homes or individual desks and work on their parts of the problem.

At one point, my friend commented to his son that it must be a hard assignment. The youngster acknowledged that it was, but also said that it was either really cool or really hot. His dad couldn’t remember for sure which he said, but either way, part of his son’s joy came from the challenge.

Actually, joy was not the right word. His son was absorbed. He worked on it at school. He doodled project figures while he watched TV. He rode a bus to the community college library to research some issues needed to solve a problem. He spent several hours researching on the Internet. He interviewed adults in the community with expertise on different topics.

The father noticed over time that there was some turnover in the group of students working on the project, although the core stayed the same. His son said some of the students lost interest in this project and were given different assignments at school.

At the same time, students who had been working on other projects joined his son’s group. They brought certain skills with them from their previous projects.

There were days when the students withdrew into their individual work and the project would not show much change. Then suddenly the whole thing would jump forward a couple of notches.

Then it was over. Teachers and other staff members gave the projects dramatic, mysterious names; they designed dark T-shirts with bright-colored graphics for the team members; and they held celebrations where students talked about their projects.

Parents were invited to the celebrations. Only then did my friend realize there were block classes from grade school, middle school and high schools working together on the project. There were also adults in on the project and the celebration. They raved about the complicated challenges they had to master.

My friend didn’t fully understand the celebration because the students had developed a playful shorthand language. They obviously understood each other.

They could hardly wait to get their next project. In fact, they weren’t waiting for an assignment — they were choosing a project from several alternatives. They looked forward to researching the projects before they chose one.

OK. OK. None of this ever happened. I don’t have a friend with a son who had this experience.

But, if James Paul Gee is right in his book "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy," successful video game writers have figured out the learning principles that grab the natural curiosity of young people by the throat — and it looks a lot like the story above.

Gee, a professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a linguist, argues persuasively that video games have developed ways to help youngsters try on various identities, belong to different affinity groups, understand different styles of communication, experiment with many problem-solving skills, develop ways to read nonverbal cues and transfer skills from one activity to another.

This power to teach, Gee says, can be used for "good or ill."

If that power does not make parents want to understand the video games their children play, they’re not paying attention.

Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. Send e-mail to bsjf@gte.net.