You knew it had to happen… My little OCD thing about learning opportunities…
So the whole Pokemon Go phenomenon has been chafing for awhile – a game that Rockstar says “all” the kids are playing in school – how can the Pokemon People waste such a teaching opportunity??? (I mean, look at Minecraft.edu and all the coding schools that have sprouted out – and which revolve around teaching coding via computer games.)
And then Rockstar went to point out some of these animals are real. Of course he did. So if you are one of the tens of thousands of parents out there who likely have lost your phone to your kid because of this game, let’s not totally waste that:
https://youtu.be/i6TXTp5bdX0
(This next one’s similar, but it’s got the theme song. Never heard the theme song before. It’s quite catchy <sorry> “Pokemon, gotta catch ’em all, gotta catch ’em all…”)
Thought that was all? NooOo.. There are also bragging rights involved. Apparently, some Pokemon can only be caught if you play this darn game in different continents.
These are the Bragging Rights 4 (some kind of buffalo from North America, Mime inspired by the European arts, Asian duck, mutant Aussie kangaroo). pic from www.ew.com
Rockstar argued this one – apparently you cannot catch these things anywhere but in the said continents, but you can potentially hatch them anywhere. Lord knows if this is true because somewhere in the conversation about chalking up mileage with your phone in order to hatch eggs, I stopped caring. 😛
But oh, what a marketing ploy. These things seem to serve no real purpose, but actually they do – downloads and advertising and otherwise blatant glue-ing of people to their phones.
All those articles on parenting sites after Pokemon came out – Why Pokemon Is Bad, blah blah. Try telling your kid this when his whole class are collecting these ridiculous things. Do you really want to be the only parent who tells your kid “No Pokey”? (NOT to be confused by any wimp-out to do with “No Smokey” for eg)
How ’bout How Many Pokey Can You Identify As Inspired By Real Animals? And Can Real Animals Evolve Such Defense Mechanisms? Because well, you know, Mums always have to suck the fun out of everything justify especially to themselves, letting their kids play computer games that the parenting websites say they shouldn’t
Queen E asked recently how the angler fish produces light (symbiotic bacteria) and whether in real life animals produce electrical shocks. I didn’t even get to do anything about that because Rockstar gleefully took over. But he balked at How Bones Move Except With Muscle Attached because one thing led to another and Queen E ended up avidly watching 3 full videos in this series of Youtubes where the skinless carcass of a dog is being dissected. Here’s one (if you are at all squeamish don’t click this but it’s here to illustrate why if Her Highness sidelined in Gangsta Rap she would go by Miss Hardcore):
No, I have in fact never watched the dissection of a dog carcass until now (though I have watched my pets operated on while I was in primary school in Sandakan – the vet had a daughter who was in my tuition class and she would spend a lot of time after school helping in her parents’ clinic. Today she kicks butt as a surgeon in real life.) Anyway Queen E asked repeatedly over the last few weeks and finally I watched this thing with her to satisfy the curiosity (this is my OCD talking again). And then throughout I kept reminding her myself “This dog is already dead. Doctors do this so they get better at saving the live ones.”
Ever think about that? It’s true of so many things, you cannot possibly get good at something without awful hard work.
I was once told this story, about med students who were preparing to examine a cadaver. The teaching doctor famously stuck one finger in, and then appeared to withdraw it and lick it. The students were instructed to follow his movements. Very, very reluctantly they did, after which the teacher asked, “How many of you noticed I stuck my second finger in, but licked my third?”
That lesson probably stayed.
And I’ll take Pokemon Go any day.
