The Language of Video Games
Language. As part of your natural development, you learn one. I learned English. A product of my environment.
I wish a second language had been part of my development. Like for so many of my students, growing up in bi-lingual households. What an advantage they have. Over me.
I didn't learn Spanish until middle school, and by that time, it was a class, it was chore, and no matter how much time and effort I put in, I would never develop the natural fluency to match my English.
Put a two or three year old on skis or a skateboard or a piano, and they learn that "language." Their developing brains are wired in such a way that these skills and codes are etched in permanently.
The same holds true for computers and video games. Kids need to be wired for them. They need to be exposed to them at early ages. Now that's not to say they should sit for hours and hours in front of a monitor and do nothing else. Of course not. But they should be exposed to this "language." In order to be competitive in the future.
Watch what happens in a few years to all those boys who spent the first ten to fifteen years of their existence on their computers playing video games. No doubt they'll be seriously lacking in the social skills department, and they may also be borderline obese. But they may more than make-up for these shortcomings in their abiltiy to program the world.
For they will be the ones who have learned, speak, know and dictate the language of tomorrow.
I wish a second language had been part of my development. Like for so many of my students, growing up in bi-lingual households. What an advantage they have. Over me.
I didn't learn Spanish until middle school, and by that time, it was a class, it was chore, and no matter how much time and effort I put in, I would never develop the natural fluency to match my English.
Put a two or three year old on skis or a skateboard or a piano, and they learn that "language." Their developing brains are wired in such a way that these skills and codes are etched in permanently.
The same holds true for computers and video games. Kids need to be wired for them. They need to be exposed to them at early ages. Now that's not to say they should sit for hours and hours in front of a monitor and do nothing else. Of course not. But they should be exposed to this "language." In order to be competitive in the future.
Watch what happens in a few years to all those boys who spent the first ten to fifteen years of their existence on their computers playing video games. No doubt they'll be seriously lacking in the social skills department, and they may also be borderline obese. But they may more than make-up for these shortcomings in their abiltiy to program the world.
For they will be the ones who have learned, speak, know and dictate the language of tomorrow.