One Thing To Tell the World About Video Games
Author:
Cory Ondrejka,
Vice President of Product Development, Linden Lab, creators of Second Life
At:
Accelerating Change 2005 Conference 2005. 9. 16. - 18.
http://www.accelerating.org/ac2005/index.html
Abstract:
Games will save the world. With technology and connectivity exposing everyone to more information and misinformation than ever before, critical thinking is the most important skill of the 21st century. In a world where Presidents consult astrologers, extremists transform the faithful into weapons, schools choose creationism over evolution, and wars are justified by faulty intelligence, games are teaching hundreds of millions of players how to hypothesize, test, and verify. Games demand action before mastery, forcing gamers to experiment in order to succeed. Gamers learn that pronouncements from authority, whether from the game manual, in-game dialog, or guild leaders, must always be skeptically evaluated in light of direct experience and the
knowledge of their fellow players.
More importantly, they aren’t learning these lessons alone. In online worlds like Second Life, gamers from all over the world are building communities, forming businesses, earning real money, and teaching each other. They are collaborating to solve problems and building skills that the best universities struggle to teach. Beyond the evidence linking game to improvements in IQ, spatial awareness, visual recognition, cognitive chunking, problem solving, and eye-hand coordination, games provide players with a critical toolkit that makes them better students, citizens, employees, managers, soldiers, scientists, and parents. So get ready, world – the gamers are coming!
Author:
Cory Ondrejka,
Vice President of Product Development, Linden Lab, creators of Second Life
At:
Accelerating Change 2005 Conference 2005. 9. 16. - 18.
http://www.accelerating.org/ac2005/index.html
Abstract:
Games will save the world. With technology and connectivity exposing everyone to more information and misinformation than ever before, critical thinking is the most important skill of the 21st century. In a world where Presidents consult astrologers, extremists transform the faithful into weapons, schools choose creationism over evolution, and wars are justified by faulty intelligence, games are teaching hundreds of millions of players how to hypothesize, test, and verify. Games demand action before mastery, forcing gamers to experiment in order to succeed. Gamers learn that pronouncements from authority, whether from the game manual, in-game dialog, or guild leaders, must always be skeptically evaluated in light of direct experience and the
knowledge of their fellow players.
More importantly, they aren’t learning these lessons alone. In online worlds like Second Life, gamers from all over the world are building communities, forming businesses, earning real money, and teaching each other. They are collaborating to solve problems and building skills that the best universities struggle to teach. Beyond the evidence linking game to improvements in IQ, spatial awareness, visual recognition, cognitive chunking, problem solving, and eye-hand coordination, games provide players with a critical toolkit that makes them better students, citizens, employees, managers, soldiers, scientists, and parents. So get ready, world – the gamers are coming!