MSNBC: Game consoles remain classroom rarity
Picture: A seventh-grader at Tokyo's Joshi Gakuen all-girl junior high school
gets a response to her answer and is advised to do it again on a screen
of Nintendo DS game console during an English class in June. The
portable video game machine is used as a key teaching tool at the
Japanese school.
(by Jane Clifford, MSNBC contributor)
When David Brantley's first-grade students walked into their classroom
this month, many felt right at home. Their teacher is a rare one who
believes video games feed young minds, not rot them away. So these
Indiana kids will throw virtual bowling balls down alleys on a
projector screen and tally scores for math lessons.
"The
tradition is to despise games as a brain-drain type of thing," Brantley
says. He believes otherwise and that's why he brought a Wii game system
into Cumberland Elementary in West Lafayette to supplement his
teaching. He and some other teachers are discovering that game devices
with Internet connections are both an inexpensive route to the Web and a priceless approach to engaging their students.
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