Today, in a school I was working in, it happened again.  A teacher hit the school’s filter by attempting to go to a site that was blocked in the “game” category.  Games?  Bad. Bad site.  Game.  Bad. Time waster…

Disappointing, yes, but this is far from a rare occurrence. In many schools digital games have not made it past the security check at the front door, even though they are a fact of life for organizations as diverse as Cisco and their Binary Game, the US Army and its America’s Army game, and even the Nobel Foundation where they host games that help the common man and woman understand the thinking of Nobel laureates via their educational games.

And then tonight I read an eSchoolNews report written by Maya T. Prabhu, Assistant Editor, and titled, “Digital games: Playing for learning and health.” In it we learn, “Video game researchers gathered June 23 to discuss ways gaming can help address the gaps in U.S. students’ educational performance, while also helping to improve their health. The forum was held the day the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop released a report that specifies how increased national investment in research-based digital games can play a cost-effective and transformative role in children’s health and education.”

Farther on in the article it speaks about Dance, Dance Revolution and how many schools are now using it in physical education classes. And we also hear from Gary E. Knell, president and chief executive officer of Sesame Workshop. “We need to… merge formal and informal education,” he said, speaking of Sesame Workshop programs such as “Color Me Hungry”–a healthy eating game featuring Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster. “Children have an attraction to these games. We can make a difference in heath outcomes and reading outcomes.”

I have seen DDR engage kids in healthy behaviors, but I am less than impressed with Color Me Hungry.  I guess we just have to accept that there are good ones and not so good ones, appropriate uses and inappropriate uses.

So back to where I began, the simple blocking of all things games just does not make sense. For anyone. Rather, we need to accept the “some will be better than others,” and understand that what it says in the 2020 Forecast Trend, Games as Practice: A Trend of Pattern Recognition is already here: “Gaming platforms become critical training areas for work, problem-solving, and learning. A genre of “serious games”—aimed at education, professional training, cultural immersion, cognitive fitness, and exploring ideas—is expanding the practice of gaming beyond entertainment for youth. Games are not solely digital—many emerging games utilize hand-held mobile technologies to supplement and encourage face-to-face interactions. Blending play, research, and collaboration, games will become a medium and literacy in many facets of life.”

Any serious & systemic use of games happening where you or your children do your learning? Please share.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. It has been tagged with ddr, filtering, games, sesame street. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.