Oh man.. I'm a gamer...

Finally, some technology I can sink my teeth into. I absolutely love video games. The mindless ones where there is tons of blood, rockets, grenades, and aliens to blow up. I also enjoy the classics where overweight plumbers are in search of toadstools and princesses. I feel that this type of video game is in an entertainment category and is in a totally different world when compared to educational games. The one that vividly comes to mind is Reader Rabbit. In elementary school I played Reader Rabbit, and gradually worked my way up through the ranks. It helped develop my vocabulary, grammar, and most of all, my love for all games of the video variety. I remember getting to play Oregon Trail after learning about the Trail of Tears and Manifest Destiny. I can honestly say that if I had not played that game, I doubt I would have remembered anything about it. When playing a game, video or otherwise, it engages visual, auditory, tactile, and verbal types of learning. That two times the reinforcement versus just reading. My mother in law has rows of computers set up with educational video games to reinforce everything from math, science, to Spanish vocabulary.

As far as messaging goes... It depends. I think that for distance learning, its a great tool. For a middle school class, not so much.

As for the podcast... I feel I have a great deal to say for this in the positive light. You see, my wife is a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) with Dallas ISD. A few years back, she was chosen to be part of a study dealing with ipods, and podcast. Once a language disorder has been diagnosed, it is dealt with by therapy. There, the student learns techniques to practice to rid themselves of an articulation disorder, ways to deal with and overcome stuttering, etc. In order to assist the children and their parents with at home practice, they were lent ipods. On these ipods, were exercises/homework for the children to do. In addition to that, there were also instructions to show the parents how to properly assist their children in these exercises. You see, this couldn't have been done by just sending home some words on paper because all this usually involves movements of the mouth/tongue. So in order to show these exercises, it would have to involve the visual aspect of a podcast or video. It was a groundbreaking use of technology and the program directors actually presented the data at the TSHA (Texas Speech-Language Hearing Association) convention. Way to go Dallas! I think that this just goes to show that there are innovative ways to use technology that we can not even fathom. All it takes is a creative spark.

Some may argue that video games have nothing to do with the classroom. I think more and more, technology is blurring the lines of what belongs where. Most of these educational learning games are only available as software on computers, but the release of Brain Age for Nintendo DS brought educational video games to the mass market. Every time that there is a new Brain Age, there is pre-ordering and selling out. Many (my parents included) feel that video games are of no value. That the only skills one can attribute to them are fine motor skills of the digits and eye hand coordination. The parents even go to say that they made me dangerously antisocial. Whatever, I don't know anyone who still talks to all their high school friends. For some, that may be, but for me, I can say that I had a virtual world to study and practice the physics of a car. I say this because the Gran Turismo racing series has been given the title of most realistic racing simulator. It is indeed a race simulator. I without a doubt in my mind have avoided several crashes because of the countless hours I've spent playing this game. Just one example- I was driving home one day after school. I was new to driving at the time, being only 17. I was in a 2003 Chevy Cavalier. It is a 2.2 in-line four, front wheel drive with approx. 135 horsepower/155 ft/lb torque. I know what all this means because of that game. I was driving down a gradual hill, when it started to rain. In the slickness of the fresh rain and washed up road deposits, my back end started to slide out. Brakes would be an initial reaction, but I knew because of that game, that would disrupt my weight distribution, cause me and my car to veer out of control and off the side of that hillside. A steady increase in the accelerator to get the front wheels to pull the car out of the turn, a slight over correction of the steering wheel. Bam, I regain control.