Computer Games: What are we teaching them

After reading David WarlickÂ’s post: Innovation Learning for a Flat World, I got to thinking about the games that our students play on a daily basis and how right David and Bill MacKenty were about the language that these short-cuts use. So, I went out to the internet and in less than five minutes I found a short-cut to a very well know PlayStation2 game.

After you finish one, try a B, A, IB, IA, or S license (1-16) or rally. The ghost racer will be on. If it confuses you, press D-pad Up to toggle it off or on.

When I was working and living in Saudi Arabia I knew a 10 year old boy who was really into PS2 games (Gotta get into the lingo) He would come home from school and sit on the computer for hours looking for the newest short-cuts to his favorite games. After he found them, he would print them off and run upstairs to play the game for hours on end. Once he had mastered the short-cut he would call his buddies and they would all get together showing each other the newest short-cuts for the games they liked.

I like the thought on David’s post about rules in video games being something solid that kids ‘bump up against’ at the same time kids know that if they work hard enough and spend enough time looking for it on the internet they will probably find the short-cut around that rule. To me this sounds like a skill they might learn from their parents. We bump up against rules sometimes, say for example tax rules. As adults what do we do, we look for ways around the rules to make our lives easier. So what skills are these short-cuts teaching our students? That rules where made to be broken? Or that if you put enough time and energy into something, you can overcome the obstacle that is in your way?

Off the top of my head