电子游戏的教育价值:来自美国研究的新观点

The Educational Values of Video Games

当前,许多教育工作者和家长对电子游戏谈虎色变。然而,技术的发展已经使当今的电子游戏与过去的街机游戏有了天壤之别。美国一些知名专家和学者(包括Thiagarajan、Prensky、Johnson、Beck、Reeves、Brown、Gee以及Shaffer)的最新研究表明,电子游戏有许多积极的教育价值。本文以这些有影响力的人物及其在这一领域有影响力的著作或文章为主线,将这些挑战传统的观点归纳概括为:电子游戏是企业进行人力资源培训的新方法;电子游戏能发展玩家许多重要的能力,如问题解决能力、多任务处理能力、智力、管理能力,以及塑造玩家独特的商业品质和性格倾向;电子游戏能促进孩子们的学习。

Nowadays many educators and parents turn pale at the only mention of video games. However, influential books and papers from some famous experts and scholars in U.S.A. , including Thiagarajan, Prensky, Johnson, Reeves, Beck, Brown, Gee and Shaffer, have shown that video games have many positive educational values. These serious and compelling researches can be summed up in three aspects. First, video games are innovative approaches to human resources training. Second, video games can facilitate the skills of problem-solving, multitasking processing, intelligence as well as management competence, and nurture the special disposition. Third, video games can help children learn. The reason that video games have so many positive educational values is the technology development which has made a vast differences between modern video games and the old arcade games.