Spatial Skills and Video Games

 Spatial skills are amongst the most important skills we have in our brains. It is responsible for motor behavior, track and manipulate objects. They also give individuals the ability to represent, organize, understand and navigate the environment. Once again, there is a theme in all the research articles I have found. Researchers keep wanting to find the difference between genders. In the article by Ian Spence and Jing Feng, they analyzed both genders and found both genders equally improved on their spatial abilities after playing games that are thought to boost spatial skills. An example of these games is Marble Madnedd, where the user guides a marble through many 3-D courses which include enemies and obstacle objects. There were fundamental processes observed by the researchers such as sensory proces, attentional process, visuomotor coordination and speed, mechanisms of learning, top-down control of lower level processing, and many others. There were also factors of motivation, emotion and gender differences. Overall, they found that video games indeed improve spatial skills through these processes. 

Article information and image from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1037/a0019491 

Project Background

 Bats have a bad reputation with the public, and therefore no one looks into them. Although, they play a significant role in ecological systems through many means like bat guano for fertilizer (Sakoui, 2020). Also, bats benefit the ecosystem through seed dispersal and pollination (Kasso, 2013), especially economically by reducing the billions spent on agricultural pesticides (Hoffmaster et al., 2016). Bats are beneficial to the ecological system by consuming numerous insects and reducing the need for chemical pesticide use, benefiting humans (Ducummon, n.d.). Video games are also popular in the culture of today. Although they have adverse effects on some, educational games can have more people engaged in learning material and becoming more knowledgeable. Due to the increased use of technology in present society, individuals should use it to make themselves more intelligent. The importance of bats research is that, ultimately, it has to conclude that their conservation is necessary; if they are at risk of extinction, humans are at risk of disrupting their ecological systems and harming the economy (Lawson, 2020). 

Image from: https://unsplash.com/photos/lfQyS-TnqEg 

Locked articles and mathematic performance

 Researching articles about video games in STEM has been hard because all good articles are locked, and I cannot use my phoenix college account to unlock them. I tried to find a way around them and I still could not find some but I did find articles on the benefits of video games. The one that stood out to me is titled "Computer Games for the Math Achievement of Diverse Students" by Sunha Kim and Mido Chang. This article summarizes a study done on students to test the performance of students, separated by gender, which computer games and those who do not. The male students who played computer games demonstrated higher performance than those who did not play computer games. On the other hand, a difference in the females in the study was not found in their performance. Also, another test was done on English-speaking students and ELL students. The English-speaking students who played daily games showed lower performance in daily math. The ELL students who played daily games, on the contrary, were able to learn English more easily. 

Article and Image below's Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/jeductechsoci.13.3.224. 

Video Games for STEM Learning: How Does it Work?

The article I found most compelling this week has discussed how video games can be used for STEM learning. In the introduction, the author Jade Yang mentions how "a range of health education games have been created to help patients to recover as well as to aid the doctors to perform surgeries," I found this interesting because when I think of video games for STEM learning the thought of medical practice never crossed my mind. Video games are beneficial enough to be used as training for medical practices! Yang also mentions how beneficial video games can be, particularly with technology students; the example she gave was students at Cornell and UC Berkeley Universities. These two universities use robotic tournaments to increase students' enthusiasm for their programming courses, such as introducing programming for engineers CS1112. The last interesting point from my research this week is that video games are already created to help players gain emotional intelligence. The game consists of a village; the characters in this village are cats and dogs who do not get along (very typical). The challenge ultimately is to bring the characters together through listening to each other and managing their emotions. The creators of this game hope to gain from the player that the player will be taught sympathy. 

Reference (and image below): Yang, J. Video Games for STEM Learning: How Does It Work? Purdue University Calumet. n.d. 

Merging and Research Errors

This week I thought we would be able to make more progress on the batmon game but we ran into an error that is trying to get solved. We are having trouble merging my work with the rest of the team's work. Since that is going on, I dedicated this week to find articles that focus more on games and STEM learning; I found two that caught my attention enough to write my blog post about. The article was about a study done on students and teachers by survey after being questioned about their technology habits. The study found that learning a technology skill was motivating enough for students to learn the material. Providing a familiar and fun learning environment since this day in age most children are familiar with technology received positive responses from the students. The teachers claimed that this was a good way to engage students; they were more involved, enthusiastic, and self-pacing after incorporating technology into their studies. 

Retrieved image from: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/four-diverse-kids-wear-facemasks-sit-1805639617?id=1805639617&irclickid=2axR6VxbexyIUh4UCrRRW3yQUkBVVoQd3WT1VA0&irgwc=1&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_campaign=Curly%20Eskimo&utm_source=13749&utm_term=photo-search-top&c3ch=Affiliate&c3nid=IR-13749

Blank Scene Testing and Research Articles

This week I found more research articles on how video games benefit cognitive skills, but my focus shifted more towards the game this week. Josh created three empty scenes for us to test and put together to see if we break them when we put them together. We ran into a problem recently and are trying to find a way around that before we risk breaking anything again. As soon as we find a solution, we can progress. My assignment was to add simple text and a color background to a scene. As far as the research articles I have been reading they say similar facts centering around action video games having the most benefits. The most common skills I have been seeing are visual attention and processing speed. I am excited to get our scenes working and find more stuff on the brain. 

The brain-boosting power of video games

 This week I have been focusing on finding research on how video games can improve cognitive skills and function. I found a handful of articles that met my research needs. Still, this particular one stood out, The brain-boosting power of video games by Daphne Bavelier and C. Shawn Green, published in Scientific American. Overall, the article supports the claim that video games improve cognitive skills, specifically action video games. The points that I found very interesting were that individuals who play action video games have a greater ability to focus on visual details, sensitivity to visual contrast and can "mentally rotate objects more accurately," the example to explain this is that if an action video game player was given the task to fit an oddly shaped couch into an overpacked moving van, they could do it easily. Lastly, a study revealed that laparoscopic surgeons who were also action video gamers were able to finish surgeries quickly and efficiently, all while maintaining the necessary precision needed in an operating room. I loved reading this article. I hope I find similar ones with the STEM topic as well.

 Image from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26047025  

Getting familiar with the beginning of this semester.

I would get sick the first week of school. I am feeling a thousand times better and was able to attend my in-person classes. I do not have anything to report as far as my research project goes this week as I am getting settled and familiar with how this semester is going to go. I am trying to schedule how I will manage my time with classes and the research project since I will be taking 5 classes. I plan to do the same project I started last semester, the batmon game project. I will focus my research this semester on how games can improve your cognitive abilities and how we can bring the importance of bats to the public. 

Image from: https://www.edubloxtutor.com/what-are-cognitive-skills/ 

Final Blog Post of Spring 2021

This semester was wild because of the outage, school trying to slowly move us back into the classroom, and debates on the COVID vaccine. I am glad it is all over and hope fall 2021 will be a step toward getting things back to normal. This week in terms of research, there has not been any. My new stresses are getting transferred to ASU, applying for scholarships, and stressing over passing my summer courses. First, I need to get the ASU application out of the way and pass my summer classes to graduate on time to be eligible for the ASU TRAIN Scholarship. Then, if I am accepted, I apply to many scholarships to attend and then deal with the nervousness of starting over at a new school where you have to learn how everything works there differently from what I already know here at community college. Everything is happening so fast, and I am trying to stay calm. So, for the next two weeks, I am going to give my brain a break. I will read all the books I have been wanting to, working out as much as I want, and maybe practice a little bit of java code here and there to handle my summer semester smoothly and have another well-deserved break, then be ready for the fall! I am also trying to figure out my presentation points for my poster as well. I cannot wait to see everyone's projects and presentations. 

Research paper final and final exams !!!

 Working on my final paper, I was tempted to go deeper into my research because there is so much more to analyze, but I don't have enough time to incorporate as much as I would like; a semester is not enough time! If I am accepted back in the fall, I want to go deeper into my research and hopefully get closer to actually recreating the research methods I have found. Today I discovered that bats droppings can be an organic alternative, and there is so much when it comes to the chemistry of their excrements! I wanted to include so many more articles I found with chemistry and bioengineering but simply listing them won't do the paper justice. Final exams have been draining, but we made it to to the finish line! I hope everyone has an awesome summer and takes advantage of their free time if they aren't busy. I myself am taking summer classes to accomplish my goal of graduating in two years, kind of frightened. However, I am terrible at math and slow at programming, two of which I will be taking acceleratedly! I literally bought so many statistics books online because I am scared. 

Week of big final assignments and practice exams

The end of the semester is finally approaching, and we are being hit with 100 point assignments, practice exams, and final exams. It has been really hectic with the limited time we have left to complete my programming projects. This week as far as the project since I had time to focus on exploring Unity and not papers,  I was attempting to fix problems I ran into I was examining Josh's project because I needed help with the background and finally discovered that my project does not have to consist of the same background the entire game and there can be layers added. I want to add layers to build the bottom portion of the scene with sand and maybe a road? My next goal is to add either object on the bottom to be the sand and then slowly move the bat through the scene into maybe an abandoned house and add more background layers to make the bat fly through a longer scene. I have not started coding yet because the graphics themselves take forever and have taken longer than I thought they would. I now see why game developers take years to release a game.