http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/books/06games.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=using%20video%20games%20as%20bait%20to%20hook%20readers&st=cse&oref=slogin
This article pertains to the emerging phenomenon of using video games as teaching tools. It details how college professors, librarians, and high school teachers are using, or thinking about using, video games as a tool to more effectively teach reading, math, and even history.
This article is an example of hard news because it is reacting to a burgeoning educational practice, it is very pertinent and recent, and it's objective. The author, Motoko Rich, starts off with a lede about a writer who writes science fiction novels that seem to parallel video games in terms of structure and feeling. Rich then follows up with a nut graf about how this writer then made an online game that actually does parallel the story he was writing, thus finding a way to entice many teenage gamers in to reading. The body of the lengthy article is kind of in an ABAB format, inserting retorts against video games from professors of reading and even quotes from kids themselves that denote a disregard for reading no matter how infused with videogames it is. The ending doesn't particularly fizzle, it's a happy ending, in which video games do lead a child into reading Japanese graphic novels, so I guess that's a start.
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3 comments:
It was fun to read a different kind of article - you should take Arts Journalism!!
I like this article. I think it is a good idea to have kids and teenagers use video games to learn things in a fun way. Good job on the article analysis.
Do little kids read books or play with blocks these days?
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