Using Games to Support Children's Healthy Development: Opportunities & Challenges
We welcome Ann My Thai
to our guest
blogger series.
Readers of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s latest report, Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children's Learning and Health might be asking why we chose to discuss how digital games could advance both children’s learning and health in the same paper. Named for its founder, the Center’s roots lie in Sesame Street’s “whole child” approach, which encourages learning that supports many different aspects of a child’s healthy development—from literacy skills, to social and emotional development, to practicing healthy habits. A solid base of research tells us that children who eat healthfully and are more physically active are also able to learn more easily. It also tells us that children who suffer from health threats such as obesity do worse in school and are less successful later in life. Given the inextricable ties between learning and health, and the parallel efforts in each field to harness the power of games, we wanted to address the potential role they might play in health and education reform together.
The idea that digital games might actually help improve children's learning and health is, in some quarters, a radical one, but for authors of the report, it is also a pragmatic one. The medium has a high penetration, with 97% of American teens playing computer or video games. Furthermore, digital games are reaching children at younger and younger ages for longer periods of time. The average child begins playing games at age 6, down from 8 years old a few years ago, and the amount of time a child plays on average more than doubles between age 6 and 9. This level of play shows that it is no longer a question of whether we should enlist games in our learning and health efforts but how we may do so. Game Changer aims to spark a productive dialogue about the opportunities and challenges of using games to support children’s healthy development.
To kick off this dialogue, we unveiled the report on Tuesday with the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars at an event in Washington, DC. It featured a panel of experts from industry, research, and policy and hosted nearly 100 participants and a web audience from these key sectors.
A key insight raised at the event was the lack of training available to health researchers to engage in the type of multi-disciplinary game R&D requires. Dr. David Abrams, Executive Director of the Schroeder Institute at the American Legacy Foundation, which focuses on accelerating the reduction in tobacco use, especially for young people in the U.S. population, said that the health care sector has “not looked beyond itself” to consider the whole child in advancing children’s health. The current generation of health researchers is too often isolated from the broader perspectives or tangible incentives to engage in a multi-disciplinary approach.
Some of the biggest challenges of the day—such as childhood obesity or the fourth grade reading slump—are too broad and complex to be addressed by the expertise of any one discipline. These are problems couched in layers of social, economic and other environmental factors, as well as developmental factors distinct to each child. Responding to these issues from a whole child perspective will demand greater investment toward funding and collaboration models and infrastructure that support multi-disciplinary collaboration. Such investment is essential if we are to tap into the digital media that surrounds today’s children in a purposeful way.
Yes if the digital games media can be used for educative and developement purposes it is sure to benefit the children all over the world.
Posted by: WoW Accounts | August 24, 2009 at 04:59 AM