Annotated Resource List
TED Talk Information
The TED Talk video I watched was Your Brain on Video Games by Daphne Baveleir. This talk was about how video games can positively affect the brain. Ninety percent of children in the U.S. alone play video games. Even with that statistics, it's not just kids playing the games. The average age of a video gamer is approximately thirty-three years old. This being told, video games are quite pervasive throughout our society. Video games are so popular, that just after one month of play after the debut of Call of Duty, the game was played by the world for a combined 68,000 years of game time! Just like wine, video games can be good for you if not played in excess. The proper amount of gaming time has powerful effects on brain activity.
There are many common myths that go hand and hand with gaming. "Screen time makes your eyes worse." This is a common misconception. It has actual been proven that those who don't play games have just normal vision, while those who play games have extremely better vision. They can resolve small detail better and resolve different levels of gray easier. Another misconception that goes along with gaming is that "games lead to attention problems and greater distractibility." This was also proven to be untrue. People who play video games can resolve conflict problems and track objects easier. This allows gamers to be able to track the cars and pedestrians around them while driving. The overall passage of this TED Talk was to disclaim common myths about video gaming and to prove that, to an extent, video gaming is actually good for you.
Annotated Resource List
Scholarly Journal Article
Rozendaal, Marco. 2009. "Game Feature and Expertise Effects on Experienced Richness, Control and Engagement in Game Play." AI & SOCIETY, Vol. 24, Issue 2.
This article explains the extent to which game play is experienced as engaging is an important criterion for the playability of video games. This helps us realize the importance that video games can have with a cognitive brain. This article also explains ways that video game creators can innovate the way they create games in order to create a more educational game play for gamers.