Digital Gaming and the Army

After reading the An & Bonk (2009) article, "Designing Digital Game-Based Learning Environments" in TechTrends we were tasked with finding a educational digital game and evaluating it according to the Special Place criteria. I don't about all of you, but finding a game that was accessible was pretty hard to do. It took several false starts and downloads before I could find a game that was not meant for a 5 year-old and didn't take up so much space on my computer to be prohibitive for me to download. I not quite sold on the idea of using gaming for education, but there were some interesting games found by the class. There was one game that I was interested in playing (and I really hate video type games other than the Wii) was AmericasArmy. This is a game approved by TRADOC that teaches Army tactics and is also used as a recruiting tool. The game has also been translated in many different languages due to its popularity. Alas, no matter how I tried, I could not get the game to download correctly. While I don't believe in violent video games, I was curious to see what the Army was handing out to Americas teenagers. I guess I won't know until I get to TRADOC eh?