Are computer games making our kids fat?

No, absolutely not! Granted playing a computer game doesn’t require much in the way of physical activity, but either does coloring and it never got a bad wrap because of it. It's as if society is trying to come up with a reason why computer games are bad.

I don’t know about you, but playing an engaging computer game generally requires the use of your hands which actually makes it rather hard to eat, especially if you’re really into the game. Computer games can actually cause a lot of excitement and get your heart pumping and your anxiety levels up. That’s probably good for the body as long as it’s in a stress free environment, which playing a computer game usually is.

Read this article it says that “the single most common reason for children to become obese is a poor diet”. Computer games can't be blamed for that.

Personally, I think it’s our fast paced convenient lifestyles that are to blame. The fast food restaurants are plentiful and so are the quick easy meal solutions in the grocery store. As parents, we need to teach our children, good, healthy eating habits from the beginning. It’s not enough that you feed them good foods, they learn by watching what you eat too.

If society can blame computer games for making our generation of kid’s fat, then I am going to blame sports. The sports our children play. Listen to this, my 3 year old plays soccer. They meet once a week for 45 minutes in total. They practice for the first 20 minutes, then break for a snack, and then play against an opposing team. They are only there for 45 minutes and they have to break for a snack! If your kid can’t go 45 minutes without eating, we have a problem. So it’s not computer games contributing to the overweight epidemic, its organized sports!

You know what else a very sedentary activity that may be making us fat...studying. As our society expands its waist line, it’s also expanding its education, right? Is the trade-off to becoming smarter, being fatter....hmmm, food for thought.

The Sims

I stand corrected. The graphics in the Sims series of computer games are impeccable! The characters look so real, they move just like we move. I would say this game is comparable to the same violent computer games I ranted about last post. Now, the big question is, do they hold any educational value? Do I want my kids or students playing this game? For starters, it’s not violent, so it already gets a go ahead from me compared to its aggressive components. There are a variety of games that are the Sims. There’s The Sims, The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, and the Sims 4 is in the works. Within each of the versions, there are different collections available. The main idea is that you create virtual people and place them in homes (that you can build if you want). You give these people desires and help them reach personal goals. At one point The Sims was the best selling video game of all times. How does it educate? Well, it’s not a traditional educational computer game that presents you with information and then you regurgitate it after wards. Instead, it incorporates real life situations and has you, the player deal with them. It’s more of a tangential type of learning.

The reviews that I’ve encountered say that the game is not for a young audience, but rather for those around 16 years and up (even those the ESRB says it’s appropriate for teens). Apparently you can quite easily incorporate mature behaviour like sex and swearing.

The Sims 2 has a Best of Business Collection in which you build your own business from the bottom up. A wonderful case study for inspiring entrepreneurs.

The Sims 3 Ambitions lets you choose from a variety of career opportunities and you control their actions while they are on the job.

By my investigation it appears that the Sims teaches valuable life skills, more so, then school skills. This should not be under minded though. These skills are essential and if our youth can learn this stuff while they are having a great time playing the computer game, mission accomplished.

Check out the trailer to The Sims 2: Apartment life. Your Sim is looking for an apartment but must consider a variety of compromises, just like in real life. You may love the apartment, but not the neighbourhood. Maybe you can only afford it if you have a roommate, can you live with somebody else?

Personally I enjoy architecture and interior design, so I want to check out The Sims 3: High-End Loft.

Violent? Yes, but the graphics are so awesome!

When our kids are young, like in the pre-school and kindergarten age group, they love the educational computer games we encourage them to play, but what happens when they get a little older, say 9 or 10? Do the educational games become “lame”? By now, the youngsters have probably discovered a new realm of computer games. One of violence and aggression, but also one of fantastic graphics and a reality like no other. Have you seen some of these games? Checkout this clip of Crysis 2 . Amazing, isn't it.
Too bad it’s so violent. Unfortunately, that seems to come with the territory of “cool” video games. As much as we probably want to shield our children from it, chances are those 9 and 10 year old boys have discovered these and it’s now the hot topic of conversation. As parents what can we do? I guess try to limit the games they play, lucky for us most video games come with a rating, much like movies do. It’s called the ESRB Entertainment Software Ratings Board.

I thought these rating sounded like a great idea, until I read on. Apparently these rating are mostly voluntary and I’ve read some negative feedback on them. I guess if nothing else, it’s a starting point. As parents and educators, it’s still up to us to review and decide what our kids should and should not be playing.

What we need to do, is elliminate the divide between educational games, and the 'cool' games with the awesome graphics. Why can't the educational games be cool? Maybe there are amazing educational games like this out there. I just haven't stumbled upon them yet, but I'll keep looking.

PS. I encountered some gaming sites that required me to enter my birthday, and based on my age would determine if I could get into the site or not. Yeah, no kid will be able to figure that one out . I guess its teaching them math right...

I am NOT smarter than a 5th grader.

Are you? Challenge yourself and find out. Download this temporary version of the game. “Are You Smarter Than a 5^th Grader” is a TV game show meant to entertain but does hold some educational value as well. Its a quiz type game show asking questions that you'd learn about in early elementary school. I know it sounds easy, but try it - are you smarter than a 5th grader? Few people are. I used to watch the show, and its amazing how hard some of the questions are. Sometimes I know I learned the information at some point, but have obviously just forgotten it over the years. Other times I think I never did learn it - although maybe I did and it didn't register in long term memory so it is entirely forgotten.

I think this is a great example of how our television can work as a medium to provide both entertainment and education, just like computer games. Now, when TV first came out there were all these speculations that TVs would take over the education world. We would not longer need teachers, because TVs can teach our children. There were educational shows broadcast and I am sure you’ll all agree that TV can be an educational medium to an extent. I think the computer era is much the same as the introduction of the television. Computers do have great educational value (even more so than TV since a computer is interactive), but lets not jump to conclusions in thinking its going to replace the need of teachers in a structured educational environment, because I don’t think they ever will. (Or at least not in a future near enough that I’ll still be teaching in it).

The Middle Years

The subject matter addressed in the games for the middle years audience is lot more broad then that for pre-schoolers and kindergarteners. There are games about your usual school subjects like math and science and there are also logic games and games about building cars and time travel. Whatever your weakness is there is probably a game to help improve it (or teach it to you for the first time).

Are educational games being used by teachers in the classroom? I think it depends on the teacher. Are you a classroom teacher? If so, do you use video games to teach or reinforce certain subject areas?

Some games definitely could be used in the classroom. There appears to be lots of worthy educating games available, lots even free of charge. For example check out http://www.knowledgeadventure.com/. They bought out the original Math Blaster (it was a popular math learning game created in 1987).

Are they being used? Maybe another question to ponder is “are they being abused?” Are teachers handing the reigns over to the computer to do their job in educating the students? I am sure it can be done without realizing it. One of the biggest complaints of teachers is –time – and how there is never enough of it. Well, having the students learn various things from a computer game would free up some time for the teacher, right? Well, maybe. I am sure there are teachers out there who direct their students to some gaming website and let them go at it for an extended period of time. Sure. But, in order to incorporate learning games into your curriculum effectively it actually requires a lot of time, preparation and research.

Things you need to think about to incorporate learning games:
-Your resources: the speed and size of the computers available to your students
- The subject matter: what types of games are available?
- The students: will the game you choose appeal to most of your students, keeping in mind the age group and things like gender differences. If it’s a shoot ‘em up game, the girls may not be so enthused although if it’s a cooking game, the boys may not be into it (I know I’m generalizing but you know what I mean).
- Time: how long does it take to play?

It all of a sudden doesn’t sound so easy, does it? I’m not suggesting it’s hard to incorporate these games, I’m just saying in order to do it right, there’s a lot to consider.

Experiment Check in

Okay, so remember the experiment I mentioned I was going to do with my 3 year old. She is going to learn the words of colors via computer game, and I am teaching her words of numbers via pen and paper. After a month I will test her on both and see which method she learned more from.

One thing I have noticed so far in my experiment is that when I am teaching her these words on paper (well, actually I was using a chalkboard), I can produce feedback. As Sage is trying to match the word four with the number 4, I can tell her that the number four starts with the ‘f’ sound. Now she can narrow down her search to those words starting with the letter f. The computer game does not do this. It is not that a computer game can’t do this; it’s just that the game I choose is pretty cut and dry. Here are the words of some colors, here are the pictures of those colors match the first three correctly and you receive a reward. Match the next three correctly and you receive another reward etc. (Variable reinforcement based on an interval ratio.)
Here's what it looks like:

I think that the feedback component is a rather important one. Sage is going to learn the words of the colors simply by memorization, whereas while she’s learning the words of the numbers, she actually learning how to read. I guess that's the difference between role learning and meaningful learning. Of course what she learns from our time spent learning the words of numbers can be carried over into other activities, probably even the color words, so there is one side effect that could jeopardize the validity of my experiment, but I’m going to follow it through anyhow.

I guess if I would have thought it through a little more at the beginning, I might have chosen a different computer game. However that illustrates that often things do come up along the way that were not accounted for at the beginning. A human can adjust for such change, a computer can’t.

2 points human, 0 points machine.

Why they work.

Sage came running upstairs the other day, “Mom, what’s 3 + 2?” She was playing a Handy Manny game and they were adding tools to the tool box. This totally encourages learning, and the great thing about it, is she does not even know she is learning. She is just having fun and needs to answer the questions correctly in order to get some sort of reward. Isn’t this the goal of all parents and teachers, to make learning fun?

The reason why these games do work is that in addition to being fun and entertaining, they still encompass the aspects of learning. Most of the games work in such a way that the player is challenged to do something; lets say match the shadow to the animal. If you do so correctly you gain some sort of reward. Sometimes the reward is in the form of points, or sometimes it is just a pat on the back (not literally of course, I’d like to see that happen), what I mean is just an encouraging, “good for you, you got it right”, or something to that effect.

I have seen a variety of reinforcement schedules in these games. Depending on the game, sometimes the reinforcement occurs continuously, after ever right answer the player receives points or recognition. Sometimes however the reinforcement is offered at variable schedules. So lets say your in a rocket shooting at all the letters of the alphabet, every once in a while a certain letter that you hit will release a bonus feature or something special. The player strives for those intermittent rewards and is pleasantly surprised upon retrieval.

In addition to positive reinforcement, a lot of games also encompass negative reinforcement. If the player zaps a number, instead of a letter there is a buzzing sound, or maybe you even loose points. The two methods of negative and positive reinforcement go hand in hand.

I know this is maybe not the best parenting advise, but isn't this really how we train our kids to most things... we bribe them. "Finish all your supper and you can have dessert".
"If your good in the mall, you can get a treat". Or, remember potty training, everytime they went on the potty they got a gold star or a smarty. You probably tried a couple things until you finally found something that stuck. I know I started with stickers, I didn't want to use candy because I didn't want food to be a reward. Well, the stickers only went so far, one day I brought out the jelly beans and viola! That was way more motavational then stickers, and you know what, she learned how to go on the potty. The reward system works.

What makes you choose which game to play?

Since my new extended interest in online games I have been spending a lot of time searching the internet for them. I am so overwhelmed with the amount of games out there. I had no idea there could possibly be this many. It is not just there are so many game websites; there are so many games on each site. Check out the menu on this site http://www.friv.com/. No words just games.

I have found my patience is running a bit thin, as I search for various games. If the site doesn’t load fast enough, I exit and find a new one. Since games require the use of video they are sometimes rather slow to load. Game developers are surely aware of this though; one site I encountered, http://www.funschoolkaboose.com/, had a game to play as you were waiting for your game to load.

So how do you choose from so many options? Well in my daughter’s case, it is all based on a familiar character. She gets excited about any of the characters she watches on TV. Fortunately the networks thought of this and created websites based around the shows they offer. For example, both Treehouse and Playhouse Disney have websites in which you can access various games, each based on the characters or themes of the TV shows they provide. Sage can play a Little Einsteins game and when she is done with that she can play a Strawberry Shortcake game from the same website.

When I showed her the game about learning the words of colors (the one for the experiment I am doing), she played it for a little bit, but she wasn’t as into it as some of the other games. I think it is because it is not based on one of her TV shows. I can also tell that the animation is not as good as some of the others, so maybe she notices that stuff too (subconsciously I’m sure). Nevertheless she has already played a couple intervals of the game so the process has begun. I have also started teaching her words of numbers on the chalk board. I think she tires of that quicker then the video game. We were playing school and I was the teacher, but it didn’t take long before she wanted to be the teacher. If you have kids, you know how it goes.

Pre-school games

There is a LOT of preschool age online games out there, wow. Since I have a 3 year old daughter, Sage, I have a little experience with educational online games. Sage loves to play on the computer; I typically search the playhouse Disney website for games with her favorite characters in them. She likes Little Einstein’s, Handy Manny and Jungle Junction, just to name a few. Today however, I extended my search. I started to look outside the character’s she is familiar with and I found a whole new world of educational online games. They do all tend to have some common characteristics. They all have easy user interfaces, with some sort of narration, keep in mind kids this age cannot read, so how else are you going to communicate with them, right. They are also filled with bright colors and usually some sort of animated character, whether it is familiar or not.

For the preschool, kindergarten age group, the lessons the games are reinforcing are limited. They pretty much stick to the following categories:

• alphabet (identifying letters and sounds)
• numbers (counting, simple adding and subtracting)
• shapes
• colors
• memory
• spot the difference

One thing I can verify from personal experience is these games do entertain. If I would let her, Sage would play computer games all night. I always limit her game playing, and she never tires of it before I tell her to shut it down. So, the game makers have that part right, they know how to reel the kids in and keep them in. At this age, the kids should need the parents’ permission, and since the games are advertised as being educational, that reels the parents in. What I want to know is, is their claim valid? Is Sage actually learning anything from playing these games? My honest opinion, I think she is, but I want to prove it.

In order to prove that Sage is in fact learning something from these games I need to find a game she has never played before (that’s easy) but I also need it to teach her something she doesn’t already know. She knows how to count, and her alphabet. She getting better at adding and subtracting, what doesn’t she know how to do? Well, she can’t read yet. So, I have found a game that teaches the words of colors by sight. I am going to use this game exclusively to try to teach her how to identify the words red, yellow, green etc. I will log the amount of time she spends playing this game. At the same time, I am going to teach her how to read the words of numbers (one, two, three etc.) I will do this using a more traditional approach, paper and pen or chalk and a chalkboard. I will then compare and see what she can better recognize. I will keep you posted on the progress and post the final results in one month.

Educational games can teach us stuff

What would make a game educational? If you learn something or if you become better at a task you are already familiar with. So how are we going to determine that by playing these so called educational games we have in fact learned something, or became better at a task? Well, we can test it ourselves or look at other literature.

I have started to dive into looking at other literature.
There is not a whole lot of research done on this topic, but so far, to my surprise, all the studies I have looked at have concluded a positive correlation between playing educational games and actually learning something. A study done by Marina Papastergiou compared two test groups, one group used a gaming approach for learning computer memory concepts and the other group used a website with the instructional material and quizzes to follow. The result of the study concluded "the gaming approach was both more effective in promoting students’ knowledge of computer memory concepts and more motivational for students than the non-gaming approach." Check out the article if you want to learn more about the study. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1465357

Of course not every game that claims to be educational is going to provide us with the same rave reviews as the above fore mentioned. The above result is reassuring however that educational computer games can provide a means to learning stuff.

I want to start off my journey with a look through the ages of what types of educational games are out there. I will start with the pre-school age, working my way through the middle years and teens ending in a look at adult focused educational games. If you have any favourites that you would like me to explore, please send me the link. I intend to check back in and post my findings in a couple days.