Video games are often derided as the agent of laziness that are turning the brains of today's youth to mush. Some people, usually those who play videogames, attempt to defend viedeogames in a variety of ways. Some games have a certain amount of educational value. There are many successful programmers who grew up in front of their Ataris or TRS-80s. The increasing complexity of some games has allowed the defense that a military career may be a logical next step for the budding virtual special ops practitioner.
To these ideas we can add "helping Johnny read." Motivation being a primary component of effective learning, kids who are motivated to succeed at a videogame can achieve surprising results. For Christmas this year, we added Rock Band to our house of toys. The game allows up to four people to live out their Lizard King fantasies by playing and singing real rock songs in a videogame format. The vocal portion is essentially a karaoke machine. It is a non-trivial exercise for a little kid to keep up with the words scrolling across the screen, however. For the subset of wannabe rockers who are barely beyond the "Green Eggs and Ham" stage, song lyrics at tempo is a significant challenge. However, the urge to rock is strong.
This primal impulse is what leads seven year olds to warble, with great concentration, "I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride ... I'm wanted...dead or aliiiiiiive."
Thank you, Mr. Bon Jovi, for helping my son learn to read.
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