Final Group Project

Group: Aditi Poduval, Harry Gamble, Thu Ngo Interest: A way for parents to find/know the most up to date educational apps and a way for them to monitor their children’s app usage

Reading Week 5

  Response: The Williams et. al. reading really got me thinking about the video games I played when I was little. It notes how characters in video games are predominantly male and white. I personally never saw representation as a problem until I got to Stanford. A lot of the problems, I’ve learned, affect children.… Read more Reading Week 5

Week 5: Squire Reading Response

Squire’s 2006 publication argues that educators need to adapt to the greatly evolving world of gaming– a medium that holds a strong influence over adolescent children. I was particularly interested in the discussion on the social component of gaming, children “participating in a social world.” One manifestation of gaming as a means of social media is the… Read more Week 5: Squire Reading Response

Week 5

In The Benefits of Playing Video Games by Granic et al., I found the information about cognitive benefits intriguing and especially in the context of gender. Going back to our readings and classroom conversations last week about gendered toys and girls being more open and creative with toys that they viewed as being feminine, this reading left… Read more Week 5

Week 5 Discussion-Gaming and Mental Health

I found the Granic reading to be incredibly interesting. Primarily the idea that video games could be used as a platform to treat mental health problems in youth. This seems like an excellent opportunity area to utilize video games as a platform for social good. Additionally, I believe it would be incredibly interesting to utilize… Read more Week 5 Discussion-Gaming and Mental Health

Final Project Group

Project Group: Megan Faulk, Nicole Hardson-Hurley Interests: Middle school students

Videogames as STEM Gatekeepers

Williams mentioned an interesting theory that I would like to use this post to further explore. That theory is that video games can often serve as a kind of introduction to STEM disciplines for children. The Granic reading points to multiple different area’s, both cognitive and motivational, that support this theory. One finding in Granic… Read more Videogames as STEM Gatekeepers

Week 5 Discussion

When playing video games, there appear to be two major pillars that foster cognitive engagement: representation and interactivity. In The virtual census, Williams et al mentioned that the “absence of portrayals should lead to a feeling of relative unimportance and powerlessness” (820). This comment was powerful. When discussing the sources of stereotype threat for minorities,… Read more Week 5 Discussion

Week 5 Post

While Squire acknowledges a “fetishization and marginalization” of black culture in America, I do not buy into his justification of Grand Theft Auto as an “empowering” game that facilitates an “understanding” of life for blacks in LA in the ’90s (2006, p. 21). In fact, I think its representation of the black experience perpetuates negative… Read more Week 5 Post

Final Project Group

Final project topic: the prosocial video-creating platform WeVideo