Don’t read this if your kid plays video games and you want him to stop

An updated version of the video game walkthrough--the wiki page.  Thank you contributors. 

A student in my class referred to Seymour Papert’s 1993 book The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer this week. Not familiar with his work, I turned to trusty Amazon to read the first few pages. In doing so, I came across this statement found in the preface:

         "The love affair [he had been discussing how parents sometimes view their children as being addicted to computers and video games] involves more than the desire to do things with computers. It also has an element of possessiveness and, most importantly, of assertion of intellectual identity.”

I could just see Emery using this statement on me someday. He might stop letting me play his Nintendo. But, taken another way, imagine what our children can and do teach us about their technological worlds—see Emery’s “Let’s Plays” post.

My students are always quick to point out the dangers of the computer (cyberbullying, false, misleading information, and they point out that many of their students don’t have access to them).

But this post is really about something else—I played video games before Emery did. Some of my fondest memories were of my family playing Atari games together (my parents had fierce battles playing what I think was called Megalomania). I, like many of my contemporaries, grew up with Nintendo’s Mario and Zelda. And, then I stopped playing for many years.

The next time I picked up a console happened shortly after Emery’s birth. Well, before that Victor and I played some PC games, one of our favorites was an Alice in Wonderland adventure. Victor and I can’t remember if someone gave us one, or if we bought it, but for the next several years, we played game after game (he always watching, and yelling at me what to do—although he did get me through a sticky spot in Zelda: Orcania of Time).

I say this because I’ve gone back to one of my favorite games—Oblivion, and frankly, I don’t want to share it with Emery. Not yet.  

EMERY'S COMMENT: i'm back and i love it. mom has started playing video games again like pikmin 3 and more LEGEND Of ZELDA with help from me. i guess i owed her for when i would ask for help when i was young. She will soon finish the legend of zelda: A Link between Worlds and she will play other games with me more.