Simkins and Gill Readings

Simkins:
In the Simkins reading something that really stuck out to me was when they were focusing on discussing RPGs, role playing games. In the article the definition of RPGs branched beyond video games that were based in role playing into the ways that role playing comes up in many different learning aspects of life. The examples ranged from middle and high school through to careers in the military. Specifically they included;

"When a young person represents Uganda in Model U.N., they are role-playing for the purpose of learning. The same can be said for a history student participating in a mock trial, emergency service workers participating in an Incident Command System exercise, or military personnel participating in war games."


This opened up a new idea for me based on game play and particularly how common role playing games are. From an outside participant of video games, mostly a viewer of someone else playing, I have some experience with the way some role playing games work. Two of these games include Civilizations, which has actually been brought up a lot in the course of this class, and Skyrim. The role playing that they are referring to in the article most directly relates to the way Skyrim is played. In the game you choose your player from a wide range of species and can alter the appearance as well as what kind of player you would like to be. From watching this game being played I have noticed the ethics that are discussed in the article. By choosing your character you are deciding which nation to be affiliated with and what your proffession will be; thief, soldier, etc... I have been watching a player participating as a thief affiliated with the rebel nation. Within the game he steals and kills people, however depending on if he is in a town or in the woods and if he was attacked first or the one attacking there are different consequences that occur. These provide an ethical standpoint that the player either knowingly or unknowingly has to take into account.
Going back to the beginning of the article and if these could be used as a teaching method I am going to come to the same conclusion that I have throughout this class, I think they could be viable options for a learning experience for children. I don't know how they could be incorporated into a classroom setting, the only one that I think definitely could be use in a class would be Civilizations to teach aspects of history and the tools necessary to advance a society.


Gill:
In this article there is a good point made about the younger generation who is now in schools, they call them the "culture of interaction or Net Generation". The younger generations adapt to technology better than the teachers that are supposed to be teaching these students technology. Some call them the "Game Generation". "The Games Generation workers rarely even think of reading a manual. They'll just play with the software, hitting every key if necessary, until they figure it out" This trial and error method allows people to cognitively develop the skills the need to use software. Instead of reading a manual and following steps, they figure out their own directions which I think sometimes makes the process more concrete in their minds.
This article talks about how playing video games can lead to developing skills that can be used in other computer tasks. In my opinion I think this holds true just from watching how people who play video games and understand how different combinations of key strokes on either a keyboard or a game controller will allow certain things to occur in the game. The same is true for how to work with computer codes or different sort of website creation.