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Don't Criticise The Effects Of Video Games On Kids, Exploit Them!, Jeffrey E. Brand

Jeffrey Brand

[Extract] For young learners today, video games are part of the "cultural furniture". The development of boys and girls, their socialisation, and their formal learning (including literacy) are at risk if they reject contemporary media. What humanises technology most completely is appropriation of it. As any parent or teacher who has tried it knows, using popular media in the service of formal learning most readily overcomes the risk attributed to them. It also eliminates the source of moral panics: ignorance about the learners' world.