It’s the same old same old – human cry from those that have because they fear they might have to share. A Well-written article worth the time to read.

Here’s a well-written explanation for why most of the media-effects studies really don’t tell us anything:

WHY VIDEO GAME RESEARCH IS FLAWED

By CHRIS LAVIGNE

Studies that spread the idea that video games are harmful to children are conducted by researchers whose knowledge about video games is embarrassingly poor.

May 25, 2009

Read the whole article here

Intellagirl posted a note about this article today and I was curious, so I read it too…
She suggested that the article had entirely missed the point, and she is absolutely right!

The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 16, 2009

Students Stop Surfing After Being Shown How In-Class Laptop Use Lowers Test Scores

The article seems to be reporting on a victory in the reduction of laptop use in the classroom. Yup, you heard right, they are actually HAPPY that their students are no longer using modern technology in the classroom. The belief seems to be that using the laptop causes the students to do less well on tests.

Now, to be fair, they do admit that those students who had lower scores were in fact using their computers to check out their FB pages, ’surf’ (apparently we *still* have a problem with surfers), watch YouTube, etc.

Churchill’s Commentary on Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

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I’ve actually been pondering this since it first came out. I’m getting pretty tired of the “Games are bad for society” rhetoric. Why can’t people get past hating things and look at something that can actually make a difference, like *how*  are they useful; what are they good for; is there something we can do better with games than with other media?…  I’ve decided that rather than try and draft a careful response to this article, I’ll just give a somewhat emotional one. I’ve taken the liberty of re-printing large parts of the article; the link to the original is just below:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-565207/

Modern-technology-changing-way-brains-work-says-neuroscientist.html#StartComments

The original text is in green and my responses are in black italics just so there is no confusion about who said what.

The REAL brain drain: Modern technology – including violent video games – is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist

By SUSAN GREENFIELD – Last updated at 22:17pm on 9th May 2008

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Some years ago I was at a conference where Dmitri Williams was talking about the social history of videogames. He made reference to this song as a way of illustrating how the societal reaction to videogames isn’t really new. Since then I’ve thought about re-working (OK maybe perverting a little) the lyrics to match the current denunciation of our newest medium (with apologies and all due respect for the original composer Meredith Willson (1902-1984). For a dictionary of the original terminology, see: http://www.sewickley.org/~kcerny/LowerSchool/divisionmusical/TheMusicManDictionary.htm

Ya Got Trouble (original lyrics found here)

Read on to see my updated lyrics….

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