Video Games as a catalyst for learning and curiosity

Vid on Video Games 

In this excerpt from my subscription to FORAtv, this commentator named Peter Williams is arguing that the usefulness of video games in exploring and researching history and art. He cites the video game Fallout 3, a game set as an alternate history 1950 where the Cold War caused a nuclear meltdown in Washington D.C. He talks about how playing a game like this, where 1950s music, fashion, etc were prevalent in the game, encouraged his son to research into the Cold War and time-period pieces such as the music from that era that served as background music from the game. This is interesting because it reminded me about how I took an interest in WWII. I learned more about World War II history from playing video games and my interest in the subject matter influenced my curiosity in that portion of history. I've done research, watched documentaries, and even willingly took classes on the cultural, socio-political, and military aspects that influential part of history.

Learning Debt using Animal Crossing

This video talks about how the speaker's five-year old son learned about debt and mortgages from a game called Animal Crossing. This video was really interesting to me because this man talked about a seemingly mature idea - mortgage and debt - with his five year old son. This speaker shows two really hot ideas in Education today - the fact that children are smarter than they look and the fact that video games can educate children about complex ideas.