Laughter/Video Games: The Best Medicine

From what I have read so far of Daniel Pink's exploration of the human brain, I feel like I am getting all kinds of answers to questions that I didn't even realize that I have always wanted to ask. I have always heard things about the different sides of the brain but never realized how certain aspects of life could be divided into two different groups. I am thinking about specific people in my group of friends and am able to identify which is an L-directed thinker and which is a R-directed thinker, which ones I tend to identify with more frequently and why. I think that an understanding of these different sections of the brain and how they operate with one another is very valuable for an art teacher. Especially when dealing with teenagers who are convinced that they cannot draw and never will be able to. Helping them shut off their "bossy" L-directed thinking and learning to see with their artistic right side.

Video Games

I am thankful for finally reading something that acknowledges that their are some positive effects of playing video games! I am begging my wife to read this chapter so that she will let me get out my old video game systems that have been boxed up for four years since we got married! I remember when a point came that i stopped playing video games not because I grew up or didn't want to waste money on them anymore, but because they became to complicated! The amount of decision making, problem solving, decoding, and instinctual nature that goes into completing a video game is startling. They are layered with complexity and require a large amount of dexterity to complete successfully. Sure, sitting in front of the TV for hours is not the most healthy thing to do as Michelle Obama tells us, but there are some things happening in the brain that can help us develop the skills to connect and manipulate facts.

"James Paul Gee, professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, argues that games can be the ultimate learning machine. "[Video Games] operate with - that is, they build into their designs and encourage-good principals of learning, principals that are better than those in many of our skill-and drill, back-to-basics, test-them-unitl-they-drop schools." That's why so many people buy video games, and then spend fifty to one hundred hours mastering them, roughly the length of a college semester. As Gee writes, "The fact is when kids play video games they can experience a much more powerful form of learning than when they're in the classroom. Learning isn't about memorizing isolated facts. It's about connecting and manipulating them."

p. 193

Every video game company should include this statistic in any add that they relaease:

One study found that physicians "who spent at least three hours a week playing video games made about 37 percent fewer mistakes in laparoscopic surgery and performed the task 27 percent faster than their counterparts who did not play. p.193

Unbelievable!!!!!!!!

Laughter

I have always heard that during your first year of teaching, you should not let your students see you smile until Christmas. Otherwise they will walk all over you. I understand the thinking behind that philosophy, but Pink's evidence strongly argues the contrary. If I was able to create an environment in my classroom that was built on respect for one another but encouraged students and gave them the freedom to make each other laugh, I feel that the results would be a much higher caliber of quality and creativity than a classroom under strict rule. Everything is better when you are laughing. It is time we all realized that and pursued that. It is also time that we realized that laughing people are more creative people!!

Laughter can play a major role in reducing stress in the workplace," he says Kataria says that businesses believe that "serious people are more responsible. That's not true. That's yesterday's news. Laughing people are more creative people. They are more productive people. People who laugh together can work together." Companies such as Glaxo and Volvo have gotten the message and organized laughing clubs."

"Games are teaching a variety of whole minded lessons to a new generation of workers and have given rise to an industry that demands several of the key skills of the Conceptual Age. Humor represents many aspects of the sophisticated thinking required in automated and outsourced times. And just plain laughter can lead to joyfulness, which in turn can lead to greater creativity, productivity, and collaboration." p. 204

- Daniel Pink