Sunny day, chasing the clouds away…
I am pretty sure that those of you who are around 30 years old remember those lines very well. Go back to your childhood and I am sure that you will remember days of sitting in front of the TV set, watching Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and all the other awesome characters on Sesame Street. If there is one thing that I am sure of, it is that Sesame Street and the people behind it know a lot about children and know what is good for them.
Thus, when I read about Sesame Workshop’s latest report, I was quite happy! The Joan Ganz Clooney Center recently published a report which discusses the positive effects of video games on children. I like how the report encourages everyone – from educators to parents – to look beyond the stereotype of video games and examine how they can actually be advantageous to the development of children.
Among some of these advantages are:
• 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)
Indeed, if you think about it, video games can be harnessed to make the learning experience an even better one. While the report does not make conclusive claims, the mere fact that a reliable entity has acknowledged video games as positive is enough to make my day!