Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion college - video games.

I just can't see a problem with making things more fun if possible. My daughter has a sales and marketing job and they use a form of gamification. It is very effective. She often wins rewards for the highest sales on her team. It works for her and it is fun. What's wrong with that?

When I was a high school student, before we even had video games, I made a game out of getting good grades. The highest score in the class was reward enough for me. Recently, I wanted to lose five pounds and my son told me about the Lose It ap. It was listed on a gamification blog. It worked for me, it made losing weight more fun and it was certainly healthy. I know my son likes to increase the number of strides on our elliptical. He makes a game out of that. I am happy that he has learned to do this because he also uses a type of mental gamification to help him increase his daily hours in a painful brace. We think of little rewards for ourselves when we reach our goals.

Rewards worked really well with training my dog. I hope for more for our kids' education.

If you see a value in education and in the college experience that go beyond what can be on a sticker chart than it is problematic. "Great ideas Plato, you've earned five points and you advance to the next level, now try to earn your logic points."

You mentioned it would have value for teaching social skills. Perhaps there would be fewer struggles with developing appropriate social skills and appropriate motivation if student's didn't have stunted development due to being plugged in all the time.

Laziness and cynicism are parts of the character of many people, including myself, but having read many of your posts, you seem to revel in these traits. Why? Isn't there anything you are interested in and enthusiastic about? It's sad to see a bright, youngish person so jaded.

Parents here share ideas on how to educate their children so that they can flourish and contribute to society. Unrelenting negativity does not further that aim.

Within the context of this thread it's more along the lines of "don't do college like I did college". Particularly spending 20 hours a day playing civilization (or whatever I was playing).

I'm not particularly lazy right now. It's kind of hard to practice law full time and be lazy. And I'm not seeing 37 as being youngish. It's more middle-ageish.

College was more me completely withdrawing from life moreso than being lazy. I was really only completely non-functional for about 6 years during college and law school.

So, parents, make sure that your college students are engaged in life, adjusting well to college, and not playing video games 20 hours a day (or sleeping for 36 hours straight)!

Related article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/how-big-time-sports-ate-college-life.html
How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life
By LAURA PAPPANO
New York Times
January 20, 2012

Bite your tongue! [Grumble]...young whippersnappers...

It depends on how long I live, really.

My grandmother died at 99.

My mother, on the other hand, died at 50.

It is almost midnight and my son is playing Starcraft 2 on multiplayer. I just finished reading several chapters of Ron Paul's book to him as he played, stopping to look up and read about the 5th amendment from the book The Citizen's Constitution when it was mentioned in Ron Paul's book and then talking about real life examples of eminent domain. He is able to comprehend enough of what I read to him to discuss it and ask really good questions. Sometimes he even comes up with appropriate quotes while discussing what we read like "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" which I had heard before but didn't know where it came from so we decided to look it up on Wikipedia. I will read some more to him after I take a break. I think he could probably listen to audio books while he plays games when he goes off to college, but I think he would miss the discussion.

He has been talking about what we read so much that his dad decided to read the book too. Now we can all discuss it.