New Com Tech: Basic Outline

· More needed (5 websites, 5 articles)

Perseverance
Focus & concentration
Applying skills from games to the rest of life
Problem solving
Interactivity
Social
“exercise your shadow” – parts of personality that you don’t recognise / accept / suppressed / socially inappropriate
Venting anger through games rather than in a destructive situation
Blaming games for violence – same as blaming other stuff.
Adolescent aberrations – 13-22% of teens do all sorts of stupid stuff
Teaching tool – historically accurate games – Age of Empires

Paragraphs:

Introduction (100 words):

Statement of hypothesis: That video games are not worthless or gratuitous, and in fact, serve a great many purposes that go largely unnoticed.
Interactivity of games preferable to being a ‘viewer’.

Body ½ (200-400:

Teaches young gamers the ability to focus and concentrate on a task
Teaches them to persevere at the task at hand and be committed to the completion of a level/game/whatever
Basic and advanced problem solving and logical reasoning learnt via gaming at various levels. – Puzzle games, strategy games, warfare, etc

Body 3 (100-200):

Can be helpful in teaching more ‘tangible’ things such as history, geography, etc – especially historically accurate strategy / war type games.

Body 4:

Multiplayer aspects can improve social ability and the capacity to communicate not only with peer group, but other generations through the ‘protection’ offered by anonymity.

Body 5:

Rebuking argument that games incite violence
Saying that violent games increase violent behaviour is of the same level as that of other media forms
Video games are not the cause of adolescent violence and attitude, nor are any other types of media – puberty is.
It’s better to be venting anger in the safe environment of a video game than it is to beat someone up in the street (along these lines anyway)

Part about ‘exercising shadow’ – unleashing inappropriate aspects of your personality in a safe environment.

Conclusion:

· Repeat theses, sum main points, say “games good, games fun, get over it” in sophisticated way.

New Com Tech