Putting Games to Work Columbia SC

Posted by : Dan Heilman

The firefighters crept stealthily through the deserted corridors of the suburban shopping mall. As they tried to gauge the toxicity of the unknown gas that had been released in the building, they communicated via two-way radios and awaited further instructions from their command center.

Finally, the word came down: Record your score, exit the program, log off, and come back tomorrow for more computer-based training.

That scenario, and others not quite so hairy, might be commonplace soon, thanks to various initiatives designed to put computer-game skills to use in the training sector--both in business and in more life-and-death situations. Software designers and business and public-safety officials are recognizing that the mental skills used to hurdle levels of a game can also be used as a valuable training tool in a variety of settings.

Game on

Why does game-based training seem to have so much potential? The theoretical answer has a lot to do with how the current generation has learned how to learn.

Workers under the age of 30--the Nintendo generation, if you will--have collectively developed ways of acquiring and refining skills that differ greatly from older workers. They grew up much more prone to doing homework with the TV on and with a Walkman assaulting both ears, leading to enhanced parallel-processing ability, or the knack for dealing with numerous stimuli at once.

Thanks to game-playing--and perhaps contrary to the lame...

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