The Game Believes in You pdf

The Game Believes in You content validity

What if schools, from the wealthiest suburban nursery school to the grittiest urban high school, thrummed with the sounds of deep immersion? More and more people believe that can happen – with the aid of video games. Greg Toppo’s The Game Believes in You presents the story of a small group of visionaries who, for the past 40 years, have been pushing to get game controllers into the hands of learners. Among the game revolutionaries you’ll meet in this book:

*A game designer at the University of Southern California leading a team to design a video-game version of Thoreau’s Walden Pond.

*A young neuroscientist and game designer whose research on “Math Without Words” is revolutionizing how the subject is taught, especially to students with limited English abilities.

*A Virginia Tech music instructor who is leading a group of high school-aged boys through the creation of an original opera staged totally in the online game Minecraft.

Experts argue that games do truly “believe in you.” They focus, inspire and reassure people in ways that many teachers can’t. Games give people a chance to learn at their own pace, take risks, cultivate deeper understanding, fail and want to try again–right away–and ultimately, succeed in ways that too often elude them in school. This book is sure to excite and inspire educators and parents, as well as provoke some passionate debate.

The Game Believes in You Wonderful Digest

Many kids play games to work through personal problems and frustrations, and many turn to them to vent or grieve. A surprising number of young men I met, many from families of divorce, play games to spend time with their fathers, both in the same room and across great distances. I met a young college student named Erik Martin who discovered World of Warcraft, or WoW, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG (it’s often shortened simply to MMO), while recovering from a case of anorexia nervosa so severe that it landed him in the hospital for a month and a half during his freshman year in high school. The game, he said, saved his life. He’s not alone:a Tumblr page, “How Games Saved My Life,” details the “life-changing power of video games.”

Probably the best example of an MMO, WoW takes place in a vast fantasy world populated by trolls and elves and fire-breathing dragons, but Martin, fourteen years old at the time, found refuge, strength, and unconditional support in the human friendships he forged there. “I found it exhilarating to be in a space where I couldn’t be judged on anything except how well I did in the game,” he told me. “It’s sort of a pure meritocracy.Nobody cares where you’re from (he was from rural southern Maryland), nobody cares what you look like, nobody cares about anything except how you play the game.”12 Martin began playing WoW at a friend’s house—he knew his parents wouldn’t approve,and actually, he thought the game was a waste of time at first. But it quickly grew on him and he eventually saved up enough cash to buy himself a laptop computer so he could play in bed, under the covers, at night. By seventeen, he was a guild co-leader, directing the strategy, tactics, and movements of forty players, but also remembering to send guildmates birthday presents and baby shower gifts in the real world. “It gave me this space that was actually very, very empowering,” he said.