Video Games taught me these 3 lessons about Learning
It’s the late 80’s. This moment is what I have been daydreaming about all day at school. The soft glow of the TV projecting Nintendo’s glory onto my little face. Mouth open, eyes unblinking, my fingers shifting from button to button.
At the time, I was not thinking about what the video games were doing for me. My engagement with them was purely based on joy. As an adult, immersed in the fields of education and software engineering, I see that those engagements had significant value.
So what can we take away from our time on the controller?
1. Failure is a part of learning
Have you ever played Mega Man 2 for the original Nintendo? There were several levels in the game that had appearing and disappearing platforms, a feature that required you to perfectly time your jumps. Jump too early and the platform you were leaping on to may not have appeared yet. Too late, and the platform was gone before you landed. You had to time a series of about 20 jumps to advance in the game.
The hand-eye coordination required for this sequence of moves is something I have not seen again in life. My character died countless times before I was able to make it through. In the beginning, waves of frustration and anger would flood my body, but as I became…
