The latest generations of games are facilities complex and emergent interaction using elements of Artificial Intelligent (AI) technology within new social and cultural worlds.
These environments helps students learn by demanding integration of higher-order thinking skills, social engagement, and technology within a challenging, learner-centered instructional setting, although some of them have adverse negative effects. The effort to develop games is not merely an attempt to create relevance for today’s tech-savvy students, but rather it is a movement to invigorate the social studies with the wonderful educative power of technology (Conrad, 2010).
For along time, people have held the perspective that, it is the responsibility of parents to look after their children. To some extent, this is true although the results may not be that good. The society too has a responsibility of looking after these children especially now that the world is going through many changes socially, economically, and technologically. Parents can not be able to solely look after their children because they may not be able to educate them in some issues.
With the advancement in technology, many things have changed and communication has become easy. Almost every one (including the children) can access the internet which is have now become a necessity in many homes? Some of these games can be accessed over the internet (Roddel, 2009). Some children are even smarter than their parents and can be able to access much information from the internet more than the parents can think of.
It is clear that, these children need other people who can guide then in shunning away from such behaviors. The society is an agent of socialization and through it children are able to learn and appreciate who they are. It is through this socialization that children make friends (some good and some bad). A parent may not be in a position to know who the child meets once he is out of the house and therefore needs the help of the society (Whitehead, 2005).
Video games have become popular in many parts of the world and children like playing them. However, not all these games are good for the development of the children. Some of these games contain pornographic content which may be detrimental to the children. As far as the society may be willing to lend a hand in protecting these children in accessing such materials, the parent has a greater role to play. For instance, children like emulating what is done in the house because they think it is good.
If a parent watches video games in the presence of the children, he can not be able to restrict the children from doing the same. Parents are in a position to control what the child does in the house. First he has to earn the child’s respect if he is to succeed in bringing him up. He has to avoid watching or involving himself in some activities which he believes are bad. It is the work of the parent to control or dictate what should be watched and at what time and what should not be watched at all.
The parents should scrutinize what the child takes into the house before he uses it; he has to read the contents of each video game before allowing the child to watch. If he finds something questionable about the game, he has a right stop the child from watching it and instead of being harsh towards the child; he can buy him something educative and advice him on the dangers of watching bad video games.
It is the work of the parent to ensure that children get the right information from what they watch. This can be done through taking a thorough preview of the games that are to be viewed by kids. Also a parent can take his/her time to preview the websites that are friendly to the kids then encourage the kids to view them.
This will reduce the chances of the kid viewing pornographic content because kid friendly sites rarely show pornographic content (Olson, 2007). Much of the money used by these kids to buy video games comes from the parents. It is the work of the parent to ensure that, the child gets only what is important for him and should avoid giving him unnecessary monies.
Teachers should work in collaboration with the parents in bringing up the children. When a parent takes the children to school, it does not mean that he is incapable of bringing them up but because the children have to be educated and taught some of the things the parent may be ignorant about. Teachers should not only educate the children to fulfill their responsibility as the curriculum dictates, but should take the responsibility of instilling discipline in these children (Baek, 2008).
Video games can be used in schools for both entertainment and education. Presently, there has been the raising debate on the use serious games in schools. These are games used by the teachers to teach children issues that would rather take time or be boring if taught in class. These games have some entertainment and also some educative aspect in them. Serous games have a precise and cautiously spelt-out educational purpose and are not in any way intended for entertainment (Zyda, 2007).
According to Kremers (2009), serious games are used in the education sector primarily for solving problems. He observes that just like other games, serious games are entertaining although they are designed for the purpose of training, investigating, and/ or advertising. They do not form part of a game genre but they are a specific category of games used for solving different problems. By watching serous games, children develop the yearning to learn more from then, and this decreases the chances of the child watching bad video games.
Children develop listening and communications skills through plays and socialization, right from tender age they are involved in a number of games, which may be manipulated to form an artificial setting aimed at developing certain skills in the child. Instead of letting child watch video games and the like, the teachers together with the principals and educational administrators should set aside a day or some few minutes every day when children are allowed to be creative and act in games (Singell, 1971).
People in daily life constantly invent and reinvent situations in order to learn from them. Yet too often people fail to recognize that reinventing a situation in which one has been an actor and perhaps reliving or revising decisions made is, in effect, to play a game.
According to Wyld (2009), the abstract representation of real life in game form does not render the game any less capable of teaching “true” knowledge. He observes that, one does not have to be Shakespeare to understand his plays, but acting in the plays can yield a more vivid and lasting view of Shakespeare than would a teacher’s reading of the plays to a class.
The government too has a role to play in ensuring that, children do not access video games. Laws should be put in place that restricts the sale of video games to children under the age of 18 years. However some kids are smarter than we would think and may ask other people to buy them on their behalf or even bribe to get these games. It therefore remains the primary role of the parent since he is the only one in a position to restrict what is taken into the house and where the child goes.
Reference List
Baek, Y. (2008). What hinders teachers in using computer and video games in the classroom? Exploring factors inhibiting the uptake of computer and video games. Cyber psychology & Behavior, Vol.11 Issue 6.
Conrad, B. (2010). Children addicted to video games- Ten critical points to know. Web.
Kremers, R. (2009). Level Design: concept, theory, and practice. New York: A.K Peters, ltd.
Olson, C. K. (2007). Children and video games: How much do we know? Web.
Roddel, V. (2009). Protecting children online-basic rules. Web.
Singell, L. (1971). Communications; A note on the use of simulation games in interdisciplinary graduate education. Vol. 3, Issue 1.
Wyld, D. (2009). Developing the “Gamer Disposition”. The key to Training and learning with the digital native generation may be “serious games”…seriously. Competition forum, Vol. 7, Issue 2.
Whitehead, B. D. (2005). Parents need help: restricting access to video games. Web.
Zyda, M. (2007). Creating a science of games. Association for computing Machinery, Vol. 50, Issue 7.