Videogames have been given a surprise backing by the hands behind Sesame Street.
The Joan Ganz Clooney Center at Sesame Workshop has issued a report detailing the positive effects games can have on children, including education and "promotion of their well-being".
The report (via Variety) urges teachers, the government and the healthcare industry to launch their own research so they might learn to maximize the impact games have on kids.
"Despite their reputation as promoters of violence and mayhem, digital games have in fact been shown to help children gain content and vital foundational and 21st century skills," it says.
"Digital games can also be effective in improving children's health - from physical fitness and health promotion to disease management," the report reads.
According to the report, Children can learn the following from games:
Content (from rich vocabulary to science to history)
Skills (from literacy to math to complex problem-solving)
Creation of artifacts (from videos to software code)
Systems thinking (how changing one element affects relationships as a whole)
Don't listen to them, parents. Educational games are just a gateway drug to the Grand Theft Autos and God of Wars; your children will be corpse-humping before you know it.
Games aren't good or bad for anyone. It's all about your own perception, what you expect and which games you play. You get the same out of it that you get out of watching TV. With added improvements to hand-eye co-ordination.
Some games will help you learn stuff, some games won't. Some people will help you learn stuff, some people won't.
There is no definite "this is good for you" in any media.
It's good that someone fairly well-respected has come out and said this.
It's a matter of moderation. I think endless gaming for kids is plain wrong - and those parents who let their kids do it either because a) they just don't care or b) it keeps them out of their hair all day are just bad parents. Especially if they don't vet the games they let their kids play.
But as a tool for learning it's great. Hand-eye coordination is only one aspect, but even as an adult my ability to problem solve is much better thanks to gaming. Increased user interation with Natal could pave the way for some great learning tools in the future.
Games aren't good or bad for anyone. It's all about your own perception, what you expect and which games you play. You get the same out of it that you get out of watching TV. With added improvements to hand-eye co-ordination.
Some games will help you learn stuff, some games won't. Some people will help you learn stuff, some people won't.
There is no definite "this is good for you" in any media.
Albeit with a higher risk of carpal tunnel and other intensive repetition strains.
Speaking of games' potential to teach and nurture, I read somewhere not too long ago that children seem to respond better to lessons carried out in the guise of a game. That shouldn't come as such a big surprise and yet it did surprise me. It makess a lot of sense: How many of us find we retained more conscious memory of what we did, how we felt about it and were more willing to engage in the same activity again if we didn't dislike it, and how much more we are willing to do when we outright like the activity?
P.S. CVG, please fix the damn scolling when one opens a reply and begins to type! Are you deliberately trying to discourage posters from writing more than one sentence at a time?!?!
As much as I admire the work that Sesame Street has historically done to entertain and educate children - its kind of like Nike saying training shoes make you look good.
Sesame Street also produces educational video games, so they are hardly going to say they are bad for your children.
As EH Carr might have said "before you study the research, first study the researchers"
the problem with people saying 'gaming is good for you' or 'gaming is bad for you' is that its too general. there are thousands of systems, games and ways of playing them out there- for example, one kid could be skiing on wii fit with the wii balance board and one kid could be sitting on his bottom mowing down pedestrians on gta.
saying games are bad or good is like saying movies are bad or good, theyre all different so you cant generalise.
CVG, posting the article yourself you would of thought you'd have paid attention to what they said, because they didn't say 'educational games'. Think about games like Zelda which requires puzzle solving skills, or games like Age of Empires which is somewhat history-based, etc. and hell, I've even learnt the meaning of a few words from videogames like pursuit from Sonic/Pokemon.
And I honestly can't believe you think educational games are the only kind you can code.
I just think it's kinda ironic how whenever someone outside of the games industry slags it off (the games industry) you're quick to defend it, but as soon as someone outside of the games industry triest to defend it you go on the offensive
Mass Effect helped me understand my advanced higher Physics. I learned that to be able to travel at the speed of light, you have to be infinitely small and infinitely heavy. I also know how to survive a zombie outbreak, survive a nuclear war and fire a weapon. I can also now play the drums a la GH World Tour
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