Do Video Games and Iming Help Students?

After reading the article that Dr. Luongo posted on her blog about video games and IMing and its effect on students; I though it would be interesting to play casual observer and see if it effected people that I know. I noticed that a lot of people/my friends that IM (Instant Messgae)constantly will not speak or write properly, they will only speak in acronyms like you do in IM or text messaging. They just will leave out words or say a word as they would spell it in a text message or and IM. What I found about video game players was really interesting. People think that video games stop children from learning, what I noticed in one particular case was that one of my cousins who loves anime really got into it from video game and television anime cartoons. She can now draw anime characters from books, comics, and television anime cartoons, but she also creates her own with her friends. When she graduates high school she wants to go to school for anime and illustration. So in that case video games helped her. I also noticed that with video games you can get students to think on a more abstract bases and also get them to think outside the box. More often times than not the answer to a video game cannot be solved by book knowledge or actual book intelligence it is more of a logic answer. This will help make the students think more about what the answer instead of just getting the answer from looking it up in a book. It gets you to use multiple intelligences without actually having to be in a classroom because it give helps visual and auditory learners with the graphics and the music. I am not saying that video games will always help, but if approached correctly and not just as something to pass the time they can help students learn, and they do not even really have to be educational in the traditional sense of educational video games.

Anni