Picasso/Video Games

The Naturalist Named Madison by Anonymous: Picassohead




In the video, Your Brain of Video Games the major arguement presented by the speaker was that action video games can prove to be helpful to the brain and multi media tasking.
1. Myth: Screen time makes vision worse.
    Fact: Action gamers have better vision than those who don't play the games. This can be helpful when reading small texts like pill bottle subscriptions. An action gamers vision could prove helpful to them when driving in bad weather conditions.
2. Myth: Games lead to attention problems and greater distractability.
    Fact: In the lab, the woman speaker describes a test where she will present a word and its colored font. People were tested and asked to perform this particular duty. Gamers did a better job identifying the words. The other test was the multiple object tracking. Gamers can track 6-7 objects at one time while a non gamer can track 3 or 4.
3. The lab test with the block cubes was an important test because it helped brain scientists know that after 5 months the gamer had still improved their skills from the pre test.

In the video, Are video games making your kids smarter?, The major idea was gamification and who really needs games help.
1.) The speaker mentioned World or Warcraft (WoW) and how it can help with multitasking. A few examples are chatvoice, chattext, operate character, manage interrupts and manage long term objectives as well as short term objectives.
2.) Green matter increases in the brain when it is learning, Andrea Kuszewski presented 5 themes that can help improve learning and the brain. 1.) Seek Novelty 2.) Challenge yourelf  3.) Think Creatively 4.) Do things the hard way 5.) Network....this resembles the very idea of video games which has been proven to increase green matter in the brain. Video games offers continuous learning.
3.) Ananth Pai was a third grade teacher who brought gamification into his classroom. The students reading and language levels increased dramatically after 18 weeks.


In the video Big Thinkers: katie Salen on Learning with Games, she conveyed the message that a game can activate something within a child that enhances their skills. She thought the most important part of designing and playing games was that the kids have to ask themselves the question, "Who is on the other end of me creating this?" Games are designed for the success of the player and that will offer a child a sense of empowerment that they succeed in the game.