Final Blog, Task #10!

Part One:

Advantages: 

1. Students love social networking, and this love can be UTILIZED by instructors to teach
2. Benefits of social networking include community, local & global, and immediacy
3. Gaming allows for student created content
4. Students can teach others in a virtual world
5. Ability to role-play 'new' identities (ie- can set up a research question and build a space to observe)
6. Benefits of second life: collaboration, creativity, authenticity, community, and engagement
7. Students can 'look through the world with a different set of eyes'
8. Games spark interest, while teachers include various content/questions/lessons around that game to enhance learning altogether

Constraints

1. Unavailability of technology for some less well off students/schools
2. Teachers who are unfamiliar with games/technology are less willing to try
3. Games as a distraction in the classroom if not used appropriately

I think that we should absolutely be considering games as platforms and venues for children and people of all ages because our world is becoming increasingly technological. Our institutions must follow, its the same with any media.. it slowly gets embedded in society. If gaming is the next 'new media' we MUST think about the benefits and repercussions as we have with any other media. Nothing is perfect, and gaming for learning does have constraints, but at the same time if we put enough care into figuring out exactly what those constraints are, we can work towards creating a system to make those constraints disappear altogether. 

Part Two:
From researching for my paper about serious games I found that there are distinctly two main camps. One argues because games teach violence they cannot be used for education under any circumstances. And the other argues the opposite, that games do not necessarily teach violence and can absolutely be used in many different ways to teach educational lessons. I also learned that there is not a very wide range of research. Gaming is still a 'new media' in some ways and especially in regards to the attention it gets from the academic community.