Not really gifted research, per se. But I'm guessing that the kids who were engaging in this level of serious gaming and problem solving were pretty bright! Interesting thought, to bring gaming into the classroom for science:

http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908

Very cool. I never would have guessed any relation between playing video games and scientific process. But I think it would help if more educators spent time tapping into what truly engages a big group of kids. It's nice to see the study go beyond "kids like video games, therefore they'll like educational video" to looking at thought processes of kids who are beating the games.

When DS12 started using 'Stratagy Guides' to get him through his early Pokemon games he was young enough that I thought it was 'cute' that he was using his first 'Reference Books.'

Well it was pretty cute to see him refering back and forth to his guide. Not scientific, but definitly academic.

Interestingly, there are a lot of superstitions that were circulating at the time, such as, if you hit certain buttons, you were more likely to succed in capturing the pokemon. I liked watching him develop his approach to testing if they were true over the years.

I know of quite a few boys who learned to express themselves in written form to share ideas about computer games over the internet.

If anyone wants to open a distance learning opportunity inside of World of Warcraft, please keep me posted. It would be fun to see your character burst into flames if you give a Math answer that doesn't fit.

"19 points for Griffendor"

Grinity

I think my 10 yr old son has learned a lot playing video games. He has probably played over 100 different games if you count all the free online games he manages to find. Many of them were educational in some way. He loves games like Puzzle Quest and role playing games like World of Warcraft. We just got Rock Band 2 and he is learning words to songs from the 60's through the 90's. We are studying 20th century history and he wanted to learn about the popular music from each decade so this is a fun way to do it. Two of my son's friends came over yesterday to play Rock Band with him and they looked like they had a lot of fun. I like the fact that each person can choose their own level of difficulty for their guitar or drums or whatever they are playing.

My son also likes playing Crosswords on his Nintendo DS and I like this because it won't accept the letters he writes if they are not legible. He used to play games like Brain Age. He likes working on My SAT Coach and it actually has bubbles that have to be filled in so he gets the practice with coloring in the lines that he missed in public school.

If my twice exceptional son were in our public school he would not be learning as much as he is learning at home and homework would take him twice as long as other kids because his dyspraxia/hypotonia slow him down physically when it comes to writing anything. After doing homework, I doubt that he would have any time for learning and playing video games.

He says the next game he would like to get is Buzz Quiz TV for his PS3 because he really enjoys trivia questions. I wish he could participate in Quiz Bowl with other kids like his public schooled gifted friends, but we'll just have to do our own homeschool family version of Quiz Bowl.

He also says his dream job would be to design video games.

Very, very interesting article, Debbie. Thanks for posting it! I enjoyed reading how the boys used iterative solution methods to attack and solve a problem. It would truly be wonderful if we could capture some of that spark for learning in our schools.

There is a new movement that is slowly spreading through science educations, at least at the university level. We began to here talks about "inquiry guided" learning 7-8 years ago. The basic premise is that students do not learn hard science as well from an old-style lecture format where the professor drones on at the blackboard for 50 minutes. The new style of teaching involves presenting the material to the students and then breaking the lecture into small group discussion for 10 or 15 minutes. As as teacher, you usually give them some problem or question, and the small group must decide among themselves the solution or answer. This makes the kids become a more active component of the learning process. I would say that this approach is much more challenging for the teacher, since you have to maintain control and focus over a large group of students (more so than in a typical english class). But so far the educational research is impressive. Kids who take pre-tests and post-test for this style of teaching fare far better when compared to the pre-test and post-test of kids in the standard lecture.

If you google: inquiry based learning for physics for example, you can find all kinds of examples of this new teaching method.

ebeth - I can definitely see the advantages to that type of learning!

Reading and discussing, trying to find answers for himself, trying to find alternate ways of finding the answer especially in math, trying to prove me wrong or at least not totally right if I give him my opinion about something, and looking up info online to support his theory are the ways my son learns best.

When he went to a new Sunday school class yesterday, he complained that the teacher only had them read the material out loud and there was no opportunity for discussion. He said he thought learning by this method was very shallow compared to the way he learns at home.

I often wonder what would happen to him and his love of learning in depth if something happened to me and he had to go back to a bad school.