Annotated Link Posts

Hi,

Found a website http://sandradodd.com/special/videogames.html on Video Games and Autism which documents a mum, Susan, rebuttal of another mum(anonymous) who wrote very negatively about her experience of her autistic son obsession when playing video games resulting in failure to take care of his basic sanitary urges. Susan, has rightly pointed out that with appropriate supervisions and scaffolding, the effect of video games on her two autistic sons were positive rather than negative. This information was posted by Sandra owner of the website.
I have similar experiences with Susan. The Nintendo video games bought by me have defintely being screened for content suitable for all users that are free from gore and human violence. Playing of video games from the onset have been limited to certain times of the day and week where rules and routines for proper behaviour have been taught and enforced by my wife and myself. I have found that I have more opportunities to bond with my children by playing together or in parallel(e.g. multiplayer games through network or console). The game content becomes opportunity for teaching moments of expressive language to explicate the happenings of the game where they are interested to learn so that they can express themselves to let me know their winning moments. Moreover, I have also witnessed their systematizing ability to make sense of the interface and construct their understanding of the rules, scenario and affordances to win some levels of the game. I have experienced watching their construction of knowledge of the video game logic as they intuitively, not only navigate through the complexity of the video game gamescape but also exhibit competence in overcoming the game challenges. This observation reveals to me the rich positive potential of video games for learning.
If you are parents of autistic children who plays video games with supervision, do you also have similar experiences? Hope to hear from you when you can spare the time. Thanks.

Norman