Exercise 1.5 Strengths and weakness of video game argument

High Score Education
The introduction goes into quite a lot of detail about the failings of our education system and not producing students with basic reading skills; not into the claim that video games should be used to teach.  He claims 40% of students’ lack basic reading skills compared to foreign students. He doesn’t give a reference for that claim.  I am always skeptical of numbers or statistics unless they have been validated. 
Evidence of the managing and strategizing skills being learned by children had very good examples.  When he referenced a cognitive scientist name Andy DiSessa he showed credibility in his argument.  I did not know what the word ‘dialectic’ [discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of intellectual investigation¹] meant and felt it did not add to the argument. He had valid points to his argument that videogames encourage expertise of certain skills.
His conclusion reflects back on the body by referencing the material in it but it does not show where video games would be effective at teaching reading skills.  I did perceive in the last sentences the hint that we should make learning more like playing in a structured way so that children don’t realize they are learning.   

Sources

1.       http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dialectic  on the internet (visited September 16, 2011)