PONG

You can’t really get through a video game without learning something. It’s interesting to think about how someone learns from a video game that is not sold as ‘educational’ – unintentional learning. Oops didn’t mean to learn something…

I have a Playstation 2. A video game on fishing teaches  to select different bait in real life. FIFA and NHL ’07 teach the rules of the game.

Here I am playing PONG with my Mom in the mid-70s. PONG brought computerized video games to household console TVs. Everyone in our neighborhood came to check out our new game. My Mom must’ve got in line at Sears…

But at work it’s a different story. Gaming is still foreign in many corporate environments. Its potential is mostly unrealized. Even playing a non-electronic game like Jeopardy was a ‘behind closed doors’ event. Don’t open the training room door some might hear us having a good time! But it works. When it’s in context and done right it’s better than just about anything else.

Massively Multiplayer Virtual Worlds (MMVM) like Second Life introduce us to new ways to bring incorporate games into learning. An article in the Washington Business Journal several weeks ago (in the “Trends” section) is promising.

For those of you that have not experienced the thrill of PONG I’ve provided a link to an instructional video (below) for the Windows version. It’s an absolute scream!

(The video is also an effective illustration of how you can present really simple instructional content with humor).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6-YNmnBjAM

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Tagged as: Culture, Games, Learning, tools, Video, WTF