Dr. Bill Kelley on “Our Brains and Gaming”

Dr. Bill Kelley, Professor in Dartmouth College’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, presented to all of Richmond Middle School and several guests from Kendall this past Tuesday on the topic of gaming as an addictive behavior.

Highlights of the Presentation 

1. Members of the audience participated in several exercises to demonstrated principles of selective attention and other principles of cognitive science that explain how our brains perceive and process information. 

The Selective Attention Test:

   

&  The Ames Room in San Francisco. 

2. The role of the nucleus accumbens as "pleasure center" in the brain - an important region of the brain in rewarding behaviors. 

3. Dr. Kelley's lab has researched the role of the nucleus accumbens in game addiction for certain computer/video games. World of Warcraft is an example of a game that is addicting because the "world" never stops, players rely on participation of other players to be success and are punished if other players take a break from playing. 

4. Not thinking about something that you are addicted to is extremely difficult. Willpower and consciously taking time away from gaming is one of the only ways to deal with the addictive properties of gaming so that it does not interfere with other aspects of your life. Dr. Kelley presented a case study of a 16 year-old in the UK who has been playing World of Warcraft 16 hours per day.

Tellagami Postcards?

In social studies this fall, eighth graders have been traveling along the Silk Road as they consider important questions, such as this one:

How did the Silk Road bring the cultures of Asia together and affect the modern world? 

To demonstrate their understanding of historical societies and their impact on the world today, each student created a series of postcards.  With the 1-1 iPad program this year—and the creative tools available through dozens of apps—we’ve given students lots of flexibility and responsibility for choosing how to best express their learning.  

As a student-teacher working with Stephanie Davis in the classroom this year, I have been amazed to watch how quickly our students assimilate new technology and combine it to solve problems and produce their work.  For Silk Road postcards, we provided the content guidelines but left it to each student to decide the form they would take.  

As this project draws to a close, we thought we’d share some examples of how some of our Silk Road travelers chose to tell their story.  There is an impressive array of formats that combine everything from descriptive text and compelling images to custom-designed, hand-drawn stamps.  Click an image below to view examples:

And finally, some students created postcards using an app called Tellagami.  This is arguably the most amusing of the apps we’ve used in the classroom this fall.  It allows students to create an avatar and have them read text they’ve written in front of an image they create or select from the web.  In this example, a student, in his role as a wealthy industrialist, is sending a Tellagami postcard to his butler Alfred, who unfortunately fell sick and could not accompany him on his journeys along the SIlk Road.

https://tellagami.com/gami/LGCFNO/

Thanks to Katie Whalen, Brendan Dufty and Dan Melnikov for allowing us to share their work.