Computer Science for Education

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====== Gaming and Content/Resposibility======

Gaming is common among Americans these days. Up to 70% of Americans play video games. Video games could serve many purposes these days while resulting in many different outcomes, ranging from entertainment and time killers to education. It all depends on the content and nature of the video games. 
===== Pure Entertainment =====
"Pure" for entertainment games, such as shooters and adventure games these days, gives the user a experience that usually could not be experienced in real life. Shooting games such as the popular Modern Warfare 2, adventure games like the Uncharted series, or a mixture of different elements like Left 4 Dead. Popular games like these dominate the entertainment stage, reaching many different people. For entertainment purposes, a large number of these games have a common element/style. That is gore. Gore in a video game may disturb some and it may not, but whether it is okay for for children to view and play these games is left up to the consumer.

Many parents complain about video games being too violent, with too much exposure and misleading  story lines and language. So what can be done about this problem? Some people may suggest censorship, especially when there are sensitive subject. For example in the popular game, Modern Warfare 2, there exists a scene where the player assumes the identity of an undercover FBI agent where he needs to act as a terrorist and slaughter a bunch of innocent civilians. Some may think that since that it is only a video game, it is not a big deal. Others are deeply offended with this sort of content. Some countries around the world even banned such scenes from the game, while releasing the rest of the game. So what is being done? In fact, there is already standards that are set down to counter this issue. Censorship is one way, although often times does not work out well because of our freedom of speech. Another more practical way is the ESRB ratings, where each game is rated on its content much like with movies. This way, content could be monitored in a more responsible way.

{{http://www.esrb.org/images/ratingsymbol_ec.gif}} {{http://www.esrb.org/images/ratingsymbol_e.gif}}
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These are some of the ratings that are given to games. These are help for the individual to pick out the kind of games one may want and look for.



===== Other Gaming =====

What other kind of genres are included with the gaming bandwagon today? No, it is not entertainment. Yes, that's right, educational games. Educational games existed for quite a while actually, it is not a new concept. It has been long since people wanted to incorporate gaming with learning. It would be perfect, especially with children. Imagine learning a skill while enjoying it too! One program named Alice, is designed to teach students about the basics of computer science and programming. Using user friendly interfaces and graphics, it 'shows' people instead of teach people.

Although this is a good concept, it has not been improved enough for it to be effective. But there are experiments with a step in the right direction. Certain experiments prove that using different methods, that are related to educational gaming, actually improves the learning process by even a letter grade average! So even though this is not a big and popular idea just yet, it may be a well worth direction to look into.
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Computer Science for Education

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