Working in Movement

I've posted about video games here before. I don't play these sorts of games, but I am interested in their usefulness in various learning environments. More than anything, it is the obvious impact of the gaming activity on synaptic plasticity that really rings my bell. This quote from a post about Andy Clark is one of my favorites:

We've got a lot of cortical plasticity, a lot more than any other animal on the planet, we have a long childhood, longer than any other animal on the planet and in addition to that we've got language. And somehow I think the combination of those three things has set us on a track that no other animal has been able to go down.

Like it or not, video games are taking advantage of this remarkable property of the human brain. Rather than being a complete waste of time, some believe that the educational potential for the games is enormous. Author James Gee put it this way in Video experiential learning:

In gaming, a sandbox is the initial few levels or training area where a player masters simple skills with minimal risk. What's important is that the sandbox is like playing the game, but in situations where there are no major consequences. They provide a "psycho-social moratorium" for people to let them find their feet in the new environment before more serious challenges are to be faced

What's more, the gaming environment seems to provide a great opportunity to develop ownership of a skill, not just knowledge about it. (See yesterday's post for more on this.)

Now comes word of surgeons playing video games before using their laparoscopes to operate. Video Gamers Make Good Surgeons reports on a Beth Israel Medical Center study of 33 doctors. The study separated the docs into those who played a video game before surgery and those who didn't. Each doctor completed three video game tasks that tested such factors as motor skills, reaction time and hand-eye coordination. The results suggest those who played the games beforehand performed the laparoscopic surgeries faster and with less mistakes than those who didn't play.

"We were surprised and actually awed by the fact that your video game skill, meaning how well you play, as well as the number of hours you have spent on video games were very highly correlating — meaning if you do this well you will be less error-prone, you will be faster and you will perform better at laparoscopic surgery," said surgeon Asaf Yalif, who participated in the study.

Now, I wouldn't like to think my doctors are playing games with my health, but I am comfortable thinking about them taking ownership of their crucial skills. Note that this is not restricted to the primary types of skills easily associated with specific activity. It is the "meta" skills, things like hand-eye coordination, reaction time, etc. upon which these other skills are built. I guess you'd better own the foundation if the house stands much of a chance of being solid.