Picture it—a 6-foot, 250-lb. NCAA Division I-caliber tight end, muscles flexed and brow furrowed in deep concentration on the task at hand . . . clearing a beginner’s level in Dance, Dance Revolution Extreme 2.
No, this not-so-tiny dancer hasn’t wandered into an arcade at the mall—he’s completing an assignment in school.
For the past few years, I’ve incorporated a video game unit into my high school media literacy class. After all, the topic is relevant, interesting and immediately accessible to almost all of my students. Not a hand is left down when I ask “Who’s played video games before?”
Even the few who grimace and cross their arms when asked if they still play them laughingly admit to enjoying solitaire or puzzle games on the computer because, as one says, “Everybody plays those—they come with your computer!”
And that’s where the conversation really begins. Why do games come with your computer? What motivates companies to do that?
They sit staring at me in silence for a minute.
“Money,” one of them mumbles. “Probably just to make money.”
“Or to show what they’ve got is better than the competition,” another chimes in. The classroom is starting to buzz with a number of spontaneous musings of how the packaged games offered now aren’t much improved over games from the past.
“Well, my Mac came with Tony Hawk,” a boy in a green Bob Marley t-shirt notes. I reign the discussion back in when the talk turns to PC versus Mac.
So how does including games make companies more money?
“Because everybody plays games—like people at work when they want to kill time,” a girl says matter-of-factly. “The companies know that people don’t just use computers for work. Plus, people expect the games to be on there when they buy computers.”
We want them. We expect them. We play them. What better reason to study them?
But that’s not what they really want to know. What they really want to know is—will we play them?
The answer is yes. When we study a medium, we trace the history of its development, examine the process of its production, analyze its impact upon society and then . . . we “do” it ourselves. From shooting student films to cutting our own CDs, the class has run the gamut of media projects. Why should this unit be any different?
I’ve seen board games like Payday effectively used in consumer science classes and a role-playing game about pioneer life employed in history classes. In fact, using games to facilitate the learning of a concept isn’t a new idea.
However, tack the word “video” in front of them and, suddenly, everything changes.
Students are in school to learn, not to play. I’ve heard many concerned parents and educators use this argument. I agree with them to an extent. Students shouldn’t just play. Pulling out a console to play any random game in science class isn’t a good idea. But if students can play and learn a relevant concept at the same time, then, as an educator and a parent, I say give it a chance.
Football coaches have known it all along. Sometimes there’s much more to a game than meets the eye.
Which brings me back to the aforementioned football/DDR player. After learning about contributions from Douglas, Higginbotham, Baer, Bushnell, Miyamoto, Meier and Wright; discussing everything from game ratings to video game legislation and examining the differences between 8-bit, 16-bit and so on, he was ready to play.
What did he learn?
DDR Extreme 2 is an E-10+ rated rhythm-action game that demonstrates the “easy to learn, hard to master” concept of many successful games and requires a good deal of coordination, focus and flexibility. It certainly explodes the stereotype of video games as a non-physical medium. The pace of movements can become quite frenetic—so much so that some school systems are using it in physical education classes.
And, as he puts it, “It’s a whole lot tougher than it looks.”
Laura Gulledge, M.Ed.
Teacher of Journalism/Media Studies
Benjamin Russell High School
Alexander City, AL
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