Then, I came across the Animaniacs soundtrack and they had a song about the 50 states and their capitals. Our test that semester was about 40% of our grade in that class. It was the only class I was struggling in at the time (due to the book reading that was just NOT happening for me)

I memorized the song and passed the test with flying colors.

Thank you Wacko, Yacko and Dot!

When I was at the tail end of my (public) elementary school experience, my parents bought a GeoSafari for the family and I loved playing that game. The interactive experience of finding X country and making sure I identified it correctly (this is gonna sound cheesy) made the learning experience fun, or at least more entertaining and exciting than looking at an atlas and straight memorizing.

When I got into middle school (6th, 7th and 8th grade), I used that geography knowledge to get second place in the school geography bee when I was in sixth grade and first place when I was in eighth grade. (If I only knew what anamorphic meant in sixth grade, I might have won then…)

Seriously, if the geography game in Bully was available to children, I think it could only help open a different learning path to all students. Or even the English game, where you take six letters and try to combine them to make as many words as possible (classic word game). These types of games may seem trite, but they open your mind to different means of learning that I feel are just as viable and effective as “read book, memorize, read book, memorize”.

They claim to be non-biased but they have a deal or partnership whatever they wanna call it with AOL.

The claim to want “sanity, not censorship” but want “regulation” and but in on other peoples rating system.

Their rating system is broken. The use green for “safe”, yellow for “might not be safe”, and red for not “safe at all”. These guys gave an NC-17 movie a fricken yellow! - http://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/Lust-Caution.html

I give this site no reagards at all.

Upon doing further research on his views of this, I found that he is for legislation in the gaming industry (hence the link I posted above) Which is why I made the point that I felt he was sort of doing that to appeal to the more conservatives.

Don’t get me wrong, if I were a parent I would be cracking the whip and gaming would be a privalege not a right. That being said, our polititians should not be bringing their own parenting beliefs into their election speeches… IMO.

I don’t see the point of automatically going into fanboy mode and bringing up extra tibits about video game violence, video game ratings, how movie studios are dodging the rating system. The only Obama was trying to say with that sentense is that parents know to put education first and fun second. Period. End of story. Move along folks. Nothing to see here.

As for the educational video games, as much as I acknowledge them, they can’t be considered a substitute for an educational book. Nothing can. Not even an audiobook or and e-book is considered proper substitute for a physical paper book.

I don’t agree that video games have anything to do with societal problems, but if more kids spent time reading and not as much playing, I think that would make for a good mix.

That being said, I spent my youth doing basically only those two things - reading and gaming. I barely knew what outside looked like But at least I know how to spell today.

[face_dancing]

Republicans blame games or other entertainment media for everything, and if they had their way we’d be stacking up the books, games and magazines once again for burning in Nazi-esque piles.

Democrats blame poor parenting and seek to find ways to address the true cause of any “problems” that arise.

I’m on the sidelines now (other than vocally), but if ANY politician passes legislation that in any way impacts my freedom of gaming choices, I will be gathering up support for lawsuits to obtain the same limits on gardening, biking, hiking, customizing cars, going for walks, playing basketball in your driveway or any other hobbies other people have- since any of those hobbies are equally as likely to cause societal violence as gaming is.

If we’re going to be ridiculous in this society and ignore the facts, we need to be equally ridiculous as our “Empire” we’ve turned into continues to fall.

While it’s true that it’s a softened blow against video games, it’s a blow he didn’t need to make. He could have simply said “Americans know that to succeed in this world we need to keep our children hungry for learning” or something that simply focused on the learning part without even mentioning video games. (as Aktrez definitely mentions above)

Make no mistake: Obama is a seasoned politician, though relatively new to the national scene. Politicians know the implications with the statements they make. This was no flippant “take the controller out of their hands and give them a book!” remark, he was intentionally targeting older audiences with that remark. Which is funny because I always figured Obama was riding the wave of the young generation that was going to come out and put him over the top.

It’s a calculated risk he’s taking that a comment like that will help him win over the trust of older people that he has their children in his thoughts while not turning people off enough to not vote for him. My guess? This comment isn’t going to stop someone from voting for him, so it’s a politically wise move.

Now, I think a good interview question would ask Barack if he believes that gamers are less educated than those who do not play video games. Because that seems to be the implication made, that gaming detracts from education.

From yonder:
“I would call upon the video game industry to give parents better information about programs and video games by improving the voluntary rating system we currently have. Broadcasters and video game producers should take it upon themselves to improve this system to include easier to find and easier to understand descriptions of exactly what kind of content is included.” - Obama

Honestly, if I hear one more goddamn politician crying about the ratings system on video games, I am going to snap. Has anyone really looked at a DVD box? I mean, really looked at it? Where is the MPAA rating? It’s on the back, down in the 5 point font credits, and in the tiniest text, you can see why it got the R/PG-13/PG rating. Now look at a video game box. Where is the rating? On the front, in big, BOLD F***ING LETTERS. And on the back? Still big, and describes why it got the rating in BIG letters as well. The video game industry has the best ratings system in media.

I’m really not one to rant against “society” in general, but we really need to start getting away from investigating every tragedy that happens, because it never ends up being reasoned with difficult problems, like “Jimmy felt bullied and while his parents were rightfully working two jobs to pay for his future college education, Jimmy felt like he had no one to talk to, so he lashed out by taking an illegally bought gun and shooting his classmates.” It always ends up “Jimmy played Halo and his parents never knew that it was such a violent game when they bought it for him and that game drove him to kill. If only they had known!”

It’s garbage and I’m sick of it. The only comfort I get is in the fact that, over time, those politicians and people in power will die. People who have grown up with games their whole life will get those positions of power and know better, and look to root causes as opposed to extraneous, non-important “factors” into why people sometimes go off the deep end and do horrible things.

Maybe that’s another problem with our society. We think we can control everything to the point that nothing is outside of our control. If someone does something wrong, there must have been factors that we as a society can correct so that it will never happen again. We never believe that sometimes, a perfect storm of bad things happening in one day can just push someone to do something they never thought possible and never wanted to do. We are not robots or machines. We are emotional creatures that are unpredictable and fragile. Sometimes, we break, and there isn’t a good explanation for why. When we grasp that concept, maybe we can start weeding out what is important and correctable with what is out of our grasp.

(Wow, what a rant. Tangents galore!)