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Adults Too Quick to Dismiss Educational Gaming?
netbuzz writes "A new survey finds that more than half of K-12 students believe that educational video games in school would help them learn (no surprise), although only 15% of teachers and 19% of parents agree. Adults might not want to scoff, however, because 11% of teachers are already using video games in class and they report great results. 'Only 3% of elementary school students say they do not play video games of any kind. Students surveyed say learning via video games would help them better understand difficult concepts, become more engaged in the subject matter and practice skills. There's no mention of the games being fun, but that goes without saying.'"
think of the children
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
I don't know about your parents but mine were rife with "I didn't have it, why do you need it?" mentality. Luckily I convinced them to get a computer but it wasn't until I moved out that they had the internet ...
It's about breaking down barriers and proving that games can be more useful than just leisure and entertainment. Collaboration, teamwork, and problem solving are just a few things that come from games without the edutainment factor predesigned into them.
My work here is dung.
I remember those games where the math game gave you a series of equations and once they were all solved it would tell you how many you got correct and your overall statistics and speed. Was about 10 years ago but it really helped me a lot. With the amazing progress in computer science these 10 years I imagine if someone made something similar, maybe wrapped a better interface around it with more interactivity, kids would really benefit from it.
I don't really care *how* kids learn, so long as they really are learning.
Far too many educational methods (both regular and games) are ineffective as teaching tools. Many so-called educational games just teach nothing (yes, there are many that are effective).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If I found software that really helped my kids learn, I would be glad to try it. I've never seen anything that looked truly useful. Any recommendations?
Brain Age anyone?
I'm glad to see video games starting to get some notice on the positive influences it can have over the negative influences we hear about daily (exaggeration).
-Aegis Runestone-
I assume today's games are better at both teaching and entertainment.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
This game was bad ass. I never thought of it as educational as a kid, but I certainly wouldn't have any problem with kids playing that in school.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Is the second half of that simply made up by the submitter? It's certainly not in the link and I don't see it in the link's link.
Take that out and this basically comes down to "Parents don't think children should have candy for breakfast; children disagree".
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I think the general stigma that games are for "fun" and have little to add educationally is a bit sad. I have found some educational games to be incredible at learning new things, such as MySpanish Coach for the DS, which is especially good for when I travel. Granted, its not my only source of material, but it has been an invaluable study tool. And lets not forget, games like Police Quest were used an instructional tools many years ago.
I wonder how much the 3D shooters and GTA's have to do with the negative mindset about games as learning tools, especially when they might be taken out of context...
Putting "educational" on the box just helps the kids con their parents into buying the game.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In my last year of Primary School, the single class computer was oversubscribed because of the one game it had: a simple maze game, where certain paths were blocked with 'enemies'. On the earliest levels, these enemies would bring up simple addition problems which had to solved in under 10 seconds. I can't recall the exact penalty for failure, but the motivation to get it right was there. On later stages, subtraction, multiplication, division and simple algebra became commonplace. The quickest way around a maze would take you through harder problems - longer routes would evade the problem but reduce your overall score for a level. For a few solid weeks, it became highly competitive amongst all the boys in our class.
Being brought up with games, both at home and in school, I see no reason to oppose them now. Provided they're correctly and professionally designed, appeal to both boys and girls, and are usable by both students and teachers, they'll help increase mathematical, literary, and scientific skills. The only thing they're unlikely to help with are more creative subjects, and I'm sure the spread of computers will be the ruination of handwriting everywhere.
Where's the other 2%?
I remember lots of educational games, lame, lame, lame.
Almost any other game was more fun than the 'educational' games.
Maybe someone has found out how to write educational games that are fun to play. Maybe the situation has changed. I still have to be convinced.
Have you played educational games before?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Back when I was in school we played a lot of games in the classroom as part of the curriculum. Especially in the lower grades. Sure video games can be an educational tool, but so can the non-video variety. And games that allow a large number of students to participate at once have their own unique dynamic that I think every kid should experience. And it's not something you can really get with a video game. Sorry, but an MMO is not really the same as 20 students in a class room all trying to play a game together in their noisy and chaotic way.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Number munchers... yeah bitches.
Dysentery.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
They were mostly games where you had to use lay/lie correctly, or add up numbers, or whatever. This was in the early 80s on PET computers.
I also remember some weird machine that combined a record player with a series of slides. It asked some questions via the record player and you entered in a choice from a series of a few buttons. (I'm still dying to know what this thing was, so if anyone knows, please respond).
Anyway, I don't see what peoples issue is. If modern educational games are anything like what I had, I'd say they're doing their job. I think most parents are just unfamiliar with educational games (my grade school was pretty advanced for the times).
AccountKiller
I'm sure slashdotters can suggest some good educational games. My favorite is Oribter, it's a spaceflight simulator, but based on real physics. Playing it teaches kids about the scale of the universe, the energies involved in space travel, general math, and of course, orbital mechanics.
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html
Welcome to my cave.
Teachers will use all sorts of classic games to kids. I remember bingo, card games and charades all being used to help me learn french in elementary school (Anglophone Canadian thing I guess).
So what is electronic gaming but the next step?
Plus there are all the advantages to exposing our children to technology. Less of a concern today, but it was different 30 years ago. Who would even hire someone today who doesn't use a computer?
They can be an additional method of expressing complex problems, allows for interactive modeling of problems.
Computer games are more automated, allowing for the teacher to spend more one on one time with students.
It levels out technically exposure between sexes at a young age. Video games are still considered (although becoming less of) a boy's toy.
Why the quoted 'adults' and teachers can't seem to draw similar conclussions is beyond me. I realize exactly how much influence having an Apple II was on my education, how much fiddling with memory allocation to get my games running in DOS and resolving stupid IRQ conflicts would eventually mold my education path. I certainly wouldn't have ended up a game developer.
If nothing else, ask yourself where the Amish will be in 50 years... Think of the Amish!
I take exception with this statement. Having seen many supposedly educational games, my impression is that most if not all of then are not fun, and many are not very educational. Many are an absolute waste and should be treated with the disdain that this article indicates that many parents have.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No, it would be like if most parents didn't want their kids to have Kix for breakfast but kids like it and mother's approve. The point is both adults and kids think this is a good thing. Your straw man argument had no chance.
As a culture, we have this belief that we have to be entertained all the time. Unless you really love a subject and even then there are always boring aspects, it's going to be work. That's why folks from third world countries (that never had a computer and maybe a little TV) have an advantage in our schools. They don't expect to be entertained and they expect that they'll have to work they're ass off.
speaking of educational games, i found that number munchers/decimal munchers was extremely effective in helping me learn :)
However, if they are as socially skilled as slashdot gamers, I predict difficulties when it comes to advocacy
Actually, these types of games really did teach my how to quickly process simple math. The only reason I ever lost was those dang Troggles!!!
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
...something that the teacher wasn't even teaching, and that I wouldn't be taught for near 5 years. In second grade, I was able to teach myself algebra by analyzing problems and their solutions as posed by an educational game that we were encouraged to play (for its arithmatic game, but that was too easy). If someone had then taught me the order of operations and negative numbers, I would have had a much better start in my math education. Sadly, this did not happen, they taught multiplication tables instead, ugh. The point of this is that if a child likes doing something, and there is opportunity to use this to teach them something, this should be employed to do so. I was eager to zap those math problems as they went across the screen, and the algebra was offered as a higher difficulty level, so I tried it. These tools can be used to introduce topics before they are taught, to provide exposure to a problem before the proper analysis is taught, and can be continually used to hone the skills involved in learning the analysis.
- WWII weapons suck and are extremely inaccurate.
- Always lay down suppressing fire and try to flank the enemy.
- When engaging the enemy, use overwhelming force whenever possible.
- If you pull back on the stick while firing afterburners, you will black out.
Joking aside, I think gaming has snuck in a variety of educational facts into his noggin. Planning, thinking logically, history, reading, and problem solving are just a few of the things I've noticed rubbing off in the name of fun.Back in the day when I taught high school biology, I wrote a dog breeding program that taught genetics. The kids loved it, even though the interface was simple and the genetics were overly simplified. The key is that a game must be fun first and slyly sneak in some educational content along the way.
Computer Learning was a huge part of my school growing up. Elementary and Middle School taught with interactive games.
We Had:
Magic Garden (math, vocab, typing speed, was givien to us in first grade on Mac machines and early pcs)
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (was in our library)
Oregon Trail (was in our library, on an early mac)
Accelerated Reader program (quizzing system where books are worth points for reading based on difficulty and size)
I cant remember the others. I remember I learned the words dexterity, vitality, and mana from games when I was young.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
These kids are so right. I learned at least 90% of my personal skills through Quake Team Fortress back in the late 90s. Or should I say 5kyllz?
It was a simpler time...
... what percentage of the teachers and parents surveyed watch Fox News. Maybe they still think video games caused Columbine, Virgina Tech, NIU, and all the other school shootings...
Great game for the Apple IIe that we had in my elementary school was Number Crunchers. Great for memorizing your multiplication tables. You'd run around on a grid and eat all the numbers that were multiples of 4 or something while there were some bad things chasing you. And what didn't I learn from Oregon Trail! I would have no idea chimney rock even existed without that game! And I learned moderation. After shooting one buffalo when hunting, no need to shoot anything else because you couldn't haul all that meat away with you. So why waste the bullets?
Children should be forced, forced I say, to participate in miniature restagings of the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of Fredricksburg! Also, simulations of Warsaw Pact versus NATO during the height of the Cold War. (I just ran into a young lady who didn't know what the Warsaw Pact was! The outrage!)
Oh, and what about the bleak future when there is only war! Children should be forced to learn about this as well. How will they prepare their distant descendants for Imperial service otherwise?
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I work in this field and actually I am sadly not surprised by this at all. It is a bit of a chicken and an egg problem. Without a solid example of a good educational game it is hard to show educators the benefits of educational gaming. Without by-in from educators it is hard to get funding to build a good game.
Meanwhile the government sees little reason to look at funding R&D in education to look at innovative approaches to teaching this new generation.
However, a lot of people are working on this problem. I work for the Federation of American Scientists http://www.fas.org/programs/ltp/index.html and we have a couple of decent examples of educational games.
Also you might find this link to the educational games summit (way back in 2006) interesting. http://www.fas.org/programs/ltp/publications/summit/index.html
And when I see what the basis of the conclusions are, topped off by the title of this submission, I want to reach for my revolver.
I, for one, am moving neither too quick nor too slow to dismiss this survey as essentially meaningless. In addition, it was conducted online so I haven't found the actual survey questions yet, but the naysayers here - count me in - are right in this sense: if the claims in the pdf are an indication of actual questions, then non-biased this survey was not.
I'm all for the debate of whether this is a good idea or not - I only ask that we remember that we're debating whole-cloth.
Here's where I come down on this idea, as a parent who has had to deal with a stream of bad teachers (for my kids) and as a former child with a stream of bad teachers: While the idea is great in principle, it has the following drawbacks:
1. What positive outcomes do you expect for that subset of lazy teachers? My experience is that the computer becomes a classroom babysitter - and educational software won't help without the education part.
2. Has no one been saddled with a teacher that disliked computers or was intimidated by them - in a classroom full of computers?
3. Must everything be crammed into the schools? How many here learned beginning strategy and seat-of-the-pants probability playing kiddie poker and kiddie blackjack? Quite a few, I'd wager. I had a high school math teacher that had the entire class playing pinocle on a regular - and scheduled - basis. School is intended to be the primary structured source for learning - but not the only one. Games are great for learning - but how about the idea that maybe they're more effective OUTSIDE the classroom - because they stay games, not assignments.
For the record - I've had a stream of great teachers, too. I'm not a teacher hater - my first degree was in post-secondary education and I have a lot of teaching hours under my belt - and family full of teachers. Teaching is a most noble profession - but I don't have my head in the sand about the nobility of many teachers - that's all.
Anything that engages and teaches is a good thing.
Read any K-12 textbooks lately? Lame and weak are understatements. Now, as to those games - add the steering committee to appoint the focus group to make recommendations to the state and local boards, toss in a few lobbyists, then go to the public hearings on this topic at the school board meetings, add in the feedback from the Learn-First-Play-Later PTA committee - and tell me exactly how this is going to work out to be good for the kids.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Some C64 games I loved when I was a kid:
- Dungeons of Algebra Dragons. When you encountered a dragon it gave you an equation to solve. If you failed, you lost health.
- Playful professor. You had to solve math problems to make a little guy move in a haunted mansion and allow him to capture a cute little ghost. When you captured the ghost, you won!
- 9 to 5. The boss was chasing a secretary across an office hall while you had to type a sentence. If you typed faster, the secretary gained speed, while on every typo she went slower. While I didn't understand the sexual implications of that chase, it was a lot of fun.
A while back I wrote a piece about the ideals vs realism side of this topic for the Escapist:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_137/2940-Idea-Sex-in-the-Classroom
(Yes this is shameless pimping but I think it's pretty relevant to the main topic and a lot of these comments)
Cheers
Colin
Mario Typing was one of my favorite games as a young lad, and it vastly increased my typing speeds (from the mid-50s to the low 100s). I was 10. Once you break 100 it's pretty easy to get up to 120-140, and I owe it all to Mario Typing.
The House of the Dead typing game on the Dreamcast was also kickass. It was a lot of fun and your performance was based on typing speed. I played it in college a few times, by then I already had a 140WPM average though.
I also remember learning how to factor and multiply well using an old DOS game that we had in one of the classrooms during recess.
I don't see how anyone can deny that some video games are educational. Obviously Halo isn't going to teach you much, but the games designed toward education are usually get the job done well (and are usually pretty entertaining)
So the point is we're at a standstill. Education authorities don't believe in the teaching power of games, and the games industry believes there is no money in education. It is no small wonder games aren't widely accepted in curricula yet given no one has bothered to throw a budget at the issue.
Me, I remember being an 12 year old kid trying to explain to my father how MUDding was extremely educational. I think in within 10 years someone will gamble on a high-budget education project and come out extremely profitable.
As a relatively young-un here, I highly recommend the Disney Aladdin Activity Center, it's got quite a few memory, logic and spelling minigames within it. It's probably available on abandonware sites now and it's got quite a few interesting educational games with variable difficulty levels. Sit your kid down with the movie, which I virtually guarentee they'll love, and then put this game on for them. Ok the graphics aren't amazing any more but at the age group targeted I doubt that will matter too much.
Back in grade school, we had an electronic system with the cards where you put in the code. This was like the original version of the leapfrog books. To this day, I retain information that much of my friends either don't care about, or never learned. Granted it was very early geography and basic "chain of life" ecology, but I still remembered it nonetheless!
Something witty.
From hindsight, I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood in the 1980s. My parents threw in all they earned for me to attend a Catholic school**, and they didn't offer much in the way of computers. When I went on to Catholic high school in the early 90s, I didn't get much in the way with computers until I took AP Computer Science which was taught using already old 286 boxes. I went on to earn my BSCS and have been developing and designing software for about the past 7 years.
More anecdotal evidence. Many people I know who have come to work (not just in software) in the US from countries such as China, India, and Russia when told me their first exposure to computers was around 16-18, right when they are beginning to enter their upper learning institutions. It's about breaking down barriers and proving that games can be more useful than just leisure and entertainment. Collaboration, teamwork, and problem solving are just a few things that come from games without the edutainment factor predesigned into them. Fortunately, Physical Education class is cheaper and meets all of these objectives and has other wonderful benefits! It's not fair to choose one over the other, yet many seem to value computer education over physical education in schools, especially with budget cuts. TFA's author brought up the benefits of computers for his autistic child. I've seen articles pointing out sports also have been proven as integration therapy for autistic kids.
1 - gcc
2 - Firefox (w. Google & Wikipedia)
When their powers combine, you can build anything. It's like Legos on crack. And who doesn't like Legos?
The only game that I remember playing that I thought was both fun and helpful
Educational methods that revolve around memorization, be it in games or anything else, are usually very ineffecient. Teaching facts is along the lines of giving a man a fish instead of teaching him how to do so. Once you learn that fact, it does little to nothing to your overall education in other areas.
The most effective teaching methods involve giving students the tools to be able to learn how to learn. Most learning will be done on a student's own through exploration, even if much of it is passive.
That's where video games come in. Legend of Zelda may not teach you Mayan history, it might not show you, directly, how to do algebra, but it develops problem solving and creative thinking skills in fairly complex ways that will make a student's job in learning those things FAR easier. Zelda isn't even an "education game" but its innate problem solving is more involved that almost any story problem you'll encounter in HS, and kids play Zelda in grade school. The problem is, it's not easilly quantifiable because there are no hard-and-fast facts being learned, but as I said, fact learning is one of the least inefficient educational methods. Sure, facts must be taught, but there should be much less emphasis on fact learning and more emphasis on critical thinking skills.
Meanwhile, over the course of Zelda, or even an adventure FPS, RPG, or most other modern games, you're reading a lot of on-screen text, you're doing mathmatical computation for stats, puzzles, and the like... and all surrounded by various time limits that act as drill. And to top it off, it's fun and doesn't FEEL like work. What more could an educator ask for?
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Except that PE today consists largely of simple exercises and the most non-competitive games you can find, because it'd be a real tragedy to tell a child that they might not be good at something.
Not a typewriter
I remember being in elementary school (US) and all they had were of course classic Macs, this kind or something similar, because Apple gave a better bulk discount than IBM or clones at the time. In elementary school, we had quite a number of games that were tons of fun IMO and people ALWAYS wanted to play (including me). We had typing programmes as well. In about 3rd grade, we had these Macs, and the most popular games in class were Treasure Mountain! (very arithmetic-oriented, to the point where it would say something like "To continue: _ + 5 = 9") and Kid Pix Studio (again). Further in elementary school (when I had moved to a town where Dell donated computers; Windows 98 FE was the OS) I used Type to Learn; best touch-typing trainer I have ever seen for kids at least (I know people who STILL can't touch-type!). Type to Learn was also available for Mac, and my middle school had it on their Macs (which were mostly iMacs). Treasure Mountain! was also available for DOS and Windows (I only had a 386 "Enhanced" at home at the time). I also played Carmen Sandiego series games, which taught (just like the television programme) about earth geography.
Why is Kid Pix important? Hand-eye coordination. Treasure Mountain? Math. There were also lots of other math games too. But the problem is a lot of games that were supposed to be educational were generically made. The developers would create a template application that could be used for any subject, then just put what they need in (History, Art, Math, whatever). Lots of parents get fooled into buying these series of "games" for their kids who are struggling in school, and I know they suck for the most part.
What happened Apple? All the developers (The Learning Company especially) seemed to have left you. I doubt the reason is OS X, however. But I have to recall that when my school received new eMacs which all had OS X 10.2 already on them, the "great" school administrator decided to downgrade all of them to OS 9 because he thought OS X was too advanced an interface, whilst I was excited thinking we might have a stable OS on the computers at school up until that point.
Regardless, I think gaming for education can certainly be fun. Today, I still play around with Kid Pix every now and then. The stamps are just fun, and I even converted them to PNG for usage as icons on my computer for when I get around to creating an icon theme for KDE or Xfce. I even play Tuxmath every now and then (where simple math arithmetic falls down as ice/fireballs and you must evaluate before it hits the ground), just to speed up my arithmetic (and I am obviously much further than that). If I could find my copy of Treasure Mountain, I would definitely have played it again, even at age 19. It was that much fun, even if you have to do some math (simple multiplication and division) to get through it. My idea of at least a math teaching game is just that. Solve a problem and you get to move on. How else are kids going to learn math? This could even be applied to calculus. Imagine Treasure Mountain with calculus expressions to solve. "Solve this integral and you can move on", "get this derivative", "maximise profit given the following equation", etc.
A game could even do physics by having situations where you need to figure out the correct values using math. Wrong or right, you see the results (say, explosion and now you're dead or no explosion and you're alive). A simulator game that can violate laws in order to teach. Where are these games?
IMO, kids loved Kid Pix because of the "dynamite" eraser, which made an explosion sound. People love to hear explosion sounds.
Yes, another long post. Didn't mean to do it, I swear.
I say make them play portal to improve their reasoning skills, and teach them to think of creative solutions to complex problems. Also to keep them paranoid of rogue computers and robots, since that is a future threat our kids will surely have to face.
What kids want are not always possible or practical. That is why important things are handled by competent adults, when possible. This is not to say that kids are always wrong, or games are always bad, just that a survey like this is pretty much a pile of crap.
BTW, games are the way that most kids learned basic skills, be it following rules of a board game or spin the bottle. Furthermore, toys are often the best way to test technology. We see this with toy robots. What most people is that toys and games get more complex as the player becomes more sophisticated. I might have been happy with a toy car when I was a kid, but know I want a real car. In high school my favorite toy was my computers. I took them apart, put them together, programmed them, made them do what I wanted. If you had made me play with pre determined educational toys I would have balked. The games we played were created new games and new toys. Even in primary school there was a mix of formal games and informal games. Recall that history is full of kids creating their own play, and there is little evidence that adults enforcing their play rules as the primary play option on kids is of any real value.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
If kids got Epics in MMORPGs for getting As, they would be studying instead of farming mindlessly.
Educational Gaming is *ALREADY* here and it's already making a killing in the market, not only for kids but particularly for adults.
Some of the best sellers on the Nintendo DS could easily be classified as Edutainment. Games like Brain Age, Flash Focus or Brain Coach are all games that will also teach you to use your abilities. More recently, games like my French/Spanish Coach or My Word Coach are designed to improve your mastery of your language or start on a new one.
Those "games" work by making the necessary repetition of teaching (especially for language) less tedious than "classic" methods. After all, it does not really matters how little Johnny learnt to associate head with cabeza, it just needs to be drilled into his mind until the association is automatic. If it takes simple games to take the tedious part away, I'm all for it. I personally "play" My Spanish Coach and this has been the easiest method for me to get motivated and learn that language (YMMV).
The DS has been a revolution on that front, seen as a very nice gadget by lots of adults on top as a game console for kids. The touch screen interface blends the genre and allows new type of software for such a cheap gadget (~$100, far cheaper than a pda and much wider spread).
Check some of the games available on DS. Lots of choices.
Except that PE today consists largely of simple exercises and the most non-competitive games you can find, because it'd be a real tragedy to tell a child that they might not be good at something.
No.
The same could be said of a kid who doesn't do well in a math game. "You're just no good with math", etc.
Educational games come in two basic flavors. In the first, the "education" consists of puzzles which have to be solved to advance gameplay. These are basically drill-and-practice programs with gameplay wrapped around them. If it makes dull drill and practice tolerable, why not? Most such games are trivial. There were many such games in the DOS era; today they're in Flash. Try Type Type Revolution, which is exactly what you think it is.
The other class of educational games are simulators, designed to teach some skill. The curriculum has to be adapted to the game, rather than the other way round, and teachers hate that. Simulators are great for teaching complex skills which require coordinating multiple goals, like landing an aircraft or running a business. They're not useful for preparing students to take written tests. So the military likes them; most educators don't.
Games provide an environment where the penalty for making a mistake is trivial. You are encouraged to improve to get better results, but you don't die if you muck something up. That is value in itself.
Now, the main thing I'd like to say is that every single fun game out there is educational in some way, just not the educational games. Educational games suck: News at 11. This is as true for educational games as it is true for schools and various other learning avenues. If a game sucks, it will either not be played, or will be played in a daze. I'll assert that more kids are learning math through Guitar Hero (star power path optimizations, when to squeeze, and so on) than ever learned it through Lemonade Stand on the Commodore Pet.
Kids learn more about teamwork through Halo than they do in team sports or group projects in school. They learn the truth that not every team member has a positive value, and also how to cooperate to win. They also learn the oft-forgotten skill of how to actually get better at something. The kids that really destroy games by figuring out the best ways to optimize score, kills, whatever are going to be more capable in life than the kid who got all A's, played zero games (this is unlikely, but whatever), and hung out at the mall all day.
Am I saying to get kids to play Guitar Hero in school? Not exactly. I'm just saying that they're learning more useful skills from Guitar Hero than they are from school. At least they'll really know how to multiply by 50, 100, and 150 extremely well.
I am an IT Consultant who's main clients are small private schools, mostly dealing with K-5 students. I and my partner have been looking for edutainment games for over six months with no- and I mean NO- luck whatsoever.
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of "educational" websites with games, but letting the kids online means traversing a minefield of questions and problems- what kind of advertizing does a certain website do? Does it ask the kids for personally identifiable information? What kind of things does it want them to install- how much spyware, adware, viruses? Who owns the site, and what is the educational content on it? How do I know a safe site one day won't be bought by a hard core porn provider the next day?
Basically, with web-based games there is zero control over what the kids do and see. But as far as locally-installed games, there is nada available that is made for anything newer then Win95 / OS9, which doesn't cut it.
The state of education-segment software in general is horrible anymore. Unfortunately, quite regularly I have teachers who buy software without asking us (the Tech Dept) first, and then bring it in to be installed on their Macbooks. They then proceed to throw a hissy fit when I tell them that their "new" software was written for an utterly obsolete OS, and will in no way work on their OSX computer- despite it saying "WORKS WITH OSX" right on the box! This happens with many different pieces of education-segment software, from test builders to games.
At this point it looks like what we're going to have to do is set up a very restrictive firewall on the Kindergarten / first / second grade computers that *only* allows them to a few edutainment-games sites, owned by major corperations and large non-profit organizations (PBS, Sesame Street, and the like). It's a poor solution, and doesn't work on any of the older grades' computers since they need regular 'net access too. But it's all we can do.
It seems that many are approaching "educational games" from the wrong angle. While there can certainly be a place for games that simply teach concepts such as math or science in a relatively straightforward way, why not also use games such as Bioshock? Bioshock could be used in a ethics class to illustrate right and wrong, and how a decision that helps you now might hurt you down the road.
Games as educational tools should be approached just like reading is, there is a place for textbooks and a place for novels. Both lend to greater understanding, just in different ways.
I'm not going to waste a lot of time on the comment (as an AC no one will see it), but what do *surveys* and *beliefs* have to do with it?
:): Yep, them educational video games must be doing good!
We live in a culture where opinion surveys count as news? Don't you think... oh, I don't know,
that *research* and *data* is noteworthy.
Honestly, I don't even particularly value my own opinions; everyone has an opinion and a belief, but they don't matter much. That's why we have science and analysis.
Now, to do a little trolling
I learned more about ancient Rome and Greece, as well as Mediterranean and European geography and history by playing Rome: Total War than I ever learned from sitting in a classroom. Got an A on the Rome test, too.
I learned the basics of Newton's Laws of Motion and the Law of Gravity (or theories or whatever you want to call it) by playing physics-based games.
Learning from games is everywhere, even in the games that are branded with the "bad for children" mark by the media.
We don't hear about it because it isn't quantifiable, and cannot be used on a standard test.
As far as my experience goes, games can teach concepts but not hard facts.
Guess which is more useful in our curent society?
So Johnny, here I have 2 dead hookers and over there I have 3 more. How many dead hookers do I have all together?
5!
Very good. Now while we're here, let's discuss our anatomy lessons.
Sorry... reflexive thought whenever someone leaves themselves so open =-)
Another good physics simulation game is RigidChips, it taught me vector math, physics, and programming. It's very simple to use and also quite fun. It also allows you to create simple games. The only problem is that all the documentation is in Japanese. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RigidChips http://www.iamas.ac.jp/~takeya04/softwareE.html
At my elementary school, every Friday was computer lab day, which meant we filed off to a room full of Apple IIs and played clunky little educational games. Here's my report on the value of games in education.
1. Oregon Trail is the only thing that I have ever found interesting about the wild west.
2. I learned more about historical figures and geography from playing Carmen Sandiego than I have from any classes on history or geography. My personal favorite was Where in Time... it came with an almanac, which I now forget the name of, but it was the most academic book I owned prior to college. I played the game so much that pages started falling out of it. It was probably the most-used copy of the almanac ever printed.
3. I learned my multiplication tables -- and fast -- because of this little monochrome game where you were a stealth bomber and got to blow up things on the ground. The length of your bombing run was determined by your fuel supply, and to build that up you had to answer a bunch of multiplication problems. The game essentially rewarded you for learning your tables by giving you more time to lay waste to the countryside. On second thought, this game should probably be avoided.
4. Though not quite as fun as the stealth bomber, the original Math Blaster was also pretty good for its time. Also, no one gets killed.
5. Mavis Beacon teaches typing. More specifically, the little racing minigame taught me to type at 85 wpm. Which is not to imply I normally type at that speed. I'm not motivated enough to do that when shooting off emails. But if there's a little pixelated race car who thinks he can get the better of me, it's on.
Full disclosure: I now work in the game industry. So it may be that these educational games are actually a recruitment tool.
You are correct. There is a decent amount of research being done on this, and it pretty uniformly shows that educational games are less effective than other teaching techniques over the same period of time. Basically, the game is just getting in the way of the learning (every "fun" aspect functions as a distractor from the educational aspects).
G
A-B-C-D-E-F-G...ellameno-P...next time won't you sing with me!
Education has always been most effective through the use of games. Only the delivery system is changing
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
Our university has begin to use World of Warcraft to examine digital communication and its use in the field of Education.
"The New Age. The New Beginning."
.... I have no doubt at all as to their potential effectiveness. And if I ever decide to have kids, I hope that I can work some kind of educational gaming into their upbringing. I kind of despair at the prospect though. Occasionally I wonder through the kids/educational shelves of Best Buy or the Apple Store, and I can't help but notice what a lineup of utter crap that "educational gaming" has available these days.
And it's really just sad, considering that I *DID* in fact learn a lot with educational games. But where in the world (of gaming) is Carmen Sandiego now? Where is this generation's Oregon Trail? Why is no one filling the shoes of Rocky's Boots (haha... i make funny pun) and Robot Odyssey?!?!?
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
I have an 4 year old daughter who is extremely smart (pre-school teacher says it as well so it is more than a doting dad bragging about his kid). The thing is she has been using a computer since she was just short of her third birthday. She plays on noggin.com, pbs.org and nickjr.com. All of these sites have educational games for preschool age kids based on the characters from their programming. She is a whiz at the games and it has definitely helped her pick up things like numbers, heck she can count a hundred. It also has helped make her interested in computers and to learn how to use them at a young age. She knows where the letters are on the keyboard. She can even navigate through the start menu to Firefox, open the browser, click on favorites and bring up her sites. If she could read completely she wouldn't even need me to read the directions. I guess what I'm saying is in a technology based world that we are now living in, even being able to use a computer is a needed skill which needs to be taught to kids. Also I see educational games, ie lets learn to multiply today, are a good thing and are akin to sitting there and doing flash cards, etc to learn the same topics.
I became a parent at the age of 42 ( intentionally) and now my son is going to be 7 soon and I am looking at the half century mark looming before me. My conscious childhood was from say 1967 through 1977. Back then video games were a rare thing. As time has gone by I have watched the transition from Pong to WOW and those sorts of things.
I have serious doubt about getting my 7 year old a video game console or a DS2 or those kinds of things because I think it takes away from his experience of the real world. The lil' dude digs Pokemon, Digimon and those sorts of cards. Now playing with those have turned him into something of a math whiz (for his age) because he became very deeply interested in things like hit points and all that stuff and started doing all the math that comes along with those when he was about 5 1/2.
I watch his do incredibly imaginatively things with Lego's with his little pals. The take it apart, make it into something different time and time again. I have trouble thinking he would do the same thing with his butt parked in front of the TV with a Play Station or an XBox. He goes outside, plays soccer in the backyard and all sorts of things like that. His TV watching is very tightly limited in both time and content and so he tends to spend a lot of time playing with toys, which I think is better then spending his time sitting in front of the boob-tube.
Now I suppose you could say that I am a bad parent because I am not raising a kid that is "plugged In" and can write video drivers for Linux. Well I will take that hit, its ok. He will get a computer ( more then likely a mac ) and it will be in the family room for him to use with mom or dad keeping a loose eye on him. Perhaps even a game console when he is older that we can enjoy together, but time on that will be limited as well.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
This only makes sense if your education was 100% perfect.
I'll just assume this isn't so, in which case things could be improved.
I'm also assuming you want your kids to have those improvements.
Educational games might be that improvement.
They might not be, but claiming they're not because you didn't have them is shortsighted at best.
Thank god cavemen didn't think like that or we wouldn't have any education at all.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I remember growing up with Reader Rabbit. It was a great asset for when I was learning how to read and perform simple arithmetic. What's more, I enjoyed playing it everyday and I was able to leap ahead of the rest of my class in these subjects because the joy of playing the mini-games kept me involved in the studies daily. Don't forget about games like Oregon Trail, Word/Number Munchers and Lemmings!
the best type of educational games are the ones that seem unintentionally educational. I've learned more about history from the Civilization games (from perusing the Civilopedia feature, learning about my new units and structures) then I ever did in school (but then, my school sucked.) I've learned quite a deal about foreign policy and nation building from the gameplay itself, too (later in the game, when you basically need oil to survive, has changed a lot of my opinion on the way we muck around with other countries that got it.) the Civ games aren't marketed as educational, but that doesn't mean that you can't learn something from them.
Using Google Earth to zoom in on cities of the world I print out a "snapshot," usually showing a key feature of a city; building, river, coastline, etc. I put it on the board and the kids get three guess each (a day) to figure out which city it is. They eat it up, often begging me to print up a new city as I get to school. Not really a "video game" but a use of amazingly cool software. For this instance, and perhaps it's true for using actual games, it is the competition of winning, of being the first to get the city that is driving many of my kids. I wonder how much the desire to win drives the "fun" behind academic video games.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
I would like to second this, especially Typing of the Dead. It's not just for kids either; several international students I know use the English release of the game to improve typing speed and accuracy along with their English vocabulary (often with hilarious results, given the game words/phrases generated). And the keyboards with back-mounted Dreamcasts was a nice touch. It makes House of the Dead family-friendly, and great for the kids! Take that, Jack Thompson!
Robert X. Cringely had an interesting 3 part series on education that wrapped up last week. His last part was about how video games are the inevitable educational tool of the future. I actually thought it was the weakest of his three parts, but maybe I'm too old to see it.
I struggled for days and days and all I got was this lousy sig.
It's obvious isn't it? If the kids are enjoying it, they aren't working. If they aren't working they aren't learning! One can't learn while having fun, i know this because i'm very smart and educated and i loathed every minute of school. It was good enough my parents, it was good enough for me, and dagnabbit, it's good enough for kids today. All sarcasm aside, having learning being fun might prevent them from learning discipline. The discipline that it takes to do things you find boring so you can make a living. i'm not sure if that is a good lesson or not, but most people don't enjoy their jobs. If they did, they'd have to pay to go to work.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
PE never taught you any team building or problem solving ever. It generaly taught things like;
If some one passed you the rugby ball, casth it and throw it to the kid on the school team, before the kid who built like a brick shit house flattens you. If the brick shithouse kid has hte ball and you are in his way, you must employ your best acting skills to make it look like you are trying to takle him, while actually getting the hell out of hte way. Avoid takling or getting tackled as much as possible by never having hte ball, because the ground is either rock hard, or muddy as fuck. If you avoid getting muddy at all, this is excellent as you can then try and avoid showering, and having the creepy teacher perv at you.
If someone passes you hte football, pass it to the kid who's on hte school team before you get tackled and everyone on your team gives you a dead leg. If the class bully is coming up the wing, pretend he is too fast and you couldn't catch him to takle him, other wise he will beat you up for takling him, remember to maintain the hoax in track and field or your cover is blown, and the hard kids on you team will beat you up for not takling him. Also, threaten to beat up any kids smaller than you.
If someone passes you the hockey ball, just hoof the fucker upfield as hard as you can, and hit any other players who are weedier than you with your stick when the teacher isn't looking.
If some one throws you the basket ball, stay away from the 6 foot tall kid on thier team, and pass it to the 6 foot tall kid on your team, or to the class bully, cos he will punch anyone who tries to steal the ball from him.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Absolutely not!
This are kids who are too quick to dismiss educational part of gaming!!
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
You mean tell them that they're not good at something, then force them to do it for the next 13 years. We already have marriage for that, there's no sense in exposing our children to it any earlier than they have to.
I have a Masters in Education (emphasis Computer Education) and can say in my research I've found that engagement is the number one factor in contributing to learning. Video games can engage, but are limited to affecting only a few of the things needed to ensure learning transfer. Video games can motivate to the point where learning is "fun", thus ensuring the students have a personal connection to the content, but this connection lasts only as long as the game remains fun; we all know how long a bad game takes to get boring, and I have no faith in my fellow educators' abilities to create fun games.
Same thing can be done with Foreign Language + Tech, or History + Tech. This sort of interdisciplinary curriculum is a good way to knock out two birds with one stone (and eliminating the 5 days a week of wasted Tech class time working on "typing" skills or going on "The Internets").
Word processing and spreadsheets for writing and doing lab reports. Any other money that you wanted to spend on computer crap is better spent on good teachers, and new books where appropriate.
Call me old-fashioned but I believe teachers should teach, not stand around watching the children play computer games. That isn't teaching, that's babysitting :) In high school (the first place a computer was available when I was growing up) I spent a lot of time playing games on the school computer after hours, but the teachers actually taught their classes and I learned a lot from them. Computers in the classroom were unheard of except in a computer course.
I'm perfectly fine with my children playing video games, especially educational video games, however, I would rather they play at home with me regulating their use. I can go to any local store, buy an educational game (or download something like gCompris), install it on one of my computers and let them play for a while.
There's a difference between effort and aptitude. Not everyone can be a Michael Jordon or Albert Einstein, but that doesn't mean you should stop trying to compete.
Most so-called "educational" games are tests and nothing but tests. A learning, or educational, game is supposed to help you learn something you did not know before you started. On the other hand, a test, even in a game form, is a way to find out how well you learned something beforehand. You'd be amazed at how many educators don't even know the difference between a learning experience and a test.
At best, most games train you for faster recall of known facts, or give a text or video presentation of some facts and then drill the recall. The games where you learn something new by interacting with the game environment are still quite rare among so-called "educational" games.
I played Chrono Trigger when I was in 5th Grade. At the time we were discussing plate techtonics in Earth Science class. I brought up how the game had several changes of land mass over the time periods of 65 Million BC (Before Chrono?) and 2300 AD. Most kids laughed, but I'm starting to wonder if they had any fun playing video games. Many of their parents I knew were conservative Christians, and some had very strict upbringings. Maybe number crunchers eventually got them thinking that video games were only for learning, and my outburst was just an example of being programmed by the "man." Either way, I was shunned. Years later I still play through Chrono Trigger once in awhile. I have to say, it hasn't lost any appeal, even in these days where all I do is work and party. My generation is kinda screwy that way. Having no unifying theme, we party, we work, we party, we work... No sleep though. Is it that way for todays 10-12 year olds? Is it different for young girls, who might feel left out of the technological revolution?
Except that PE today consists largely of simple exercises and the most non-competitive games you can find, because it'd be a real tragedy to tell a child that they might not be good at something.
This is such a huge problem - if you don't teach kids the spirit of healthy competition, when they engage in competition on their own, they'll react badly. I'm from the UK, I love football (soccer), I played it every school lunch break from the age of around 8, all through my school life through to the end of college. I'm 21 now and I still get together with the lads for a kickabout every weekend if I can. The thing is, I'm crap at it. Absolutely atrocious. The thing is, I just don't care. I enjoy playing just for the enjoyment of playing. I've been getting nimbler, more athletic guys running rings around me for more than a decade now and I still love playing. Why? Because I've lost before. I get up, dust myself off, shake their hand and maybe have a beer with them later. Now, I see kids younger than me, say even 16 or 17, who now get into vicious fist-fights over who won what - why? Because it's a massive shock to them that they aren't the greatest in the world at everything.
People say they're afraid to let kids play competitive games in case they lose and get upset - what happens when they go out into the real world? People turn almost everything into a competition, and if you aren't used to losing every now and then, your world's going to fall apart. Promotions, jobs, dates, everything is a competition, and if you protect kids from losing for so long, they're either going to grow up with a fear of losing that is going to hold them back, or go to pieces the minute they're passed over for that big promotion, or the pretty redhead at the bar goes home with someone else. I'm sick of this nanny state 'protect the children' mentality that is actually damaging our children in the long term - mine was the last generation where we got to go out and play, kicking a ball around from the end of school until it got too dark to see. Now? Mothers don't let their children outside; they might scrape their knee, lose a game of football or get abducted by one of the Muslim immigrant paedophiles that the papers tell us are lurking on every corner (I'm looking at you, Daily Express). Then we wonder why we're breeding a generation of obese, allergy-ridden, selfish little preciouses.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I am one of the founders and the Chief Product Officers/Chief Creative Officer of a company called Tabula Digita. We made the first 3d action adventure game to teach algebra; It's kinda like Halo teaches algebra. The math is woven into the story line and you must use math in interesting ways to get through the missions. We even made multiplayer games that focus more on drill and practice through competition. You can get free demos of the games at www.dimensionM.com. Each mission in the games is linked to state standards so kids not only get the big picture of how math relates to a larger concept or objective through the story, but they do the actual detail work of solving problems. All while using cool vehicles, jet packs, and other fun stuff. It was the culmination of 5 years of very hard work convincing people to fund us to make it. We got venture capital after 3 years of searching. The games are now being played in over 90 schools in NYC, FL, and TX. A 1700 person study on their effectiveness is coming out this month done by the University of Central Florida. I could also go on and on with stories of how I've seen kids faces light up as they play - those kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods who see no real use for algebra and have been a part of a system that, well, you know. ... and it's amazing to see girls participating just as much as boys - fascinating. I'm happy to field any questions about making or using video games to teach.
Who says you have to teach one or the other? Why not both? In my game, Dimenxian, a player goes on a mission in a sector of an abandoned island to find mutated creatures. He/she has to capture them, weigh and measure the height as he goes (state standard exam type problems). Of course it's fun to drive the cruiser and shoot the electronic plasma net to capture. Then you have to rush back to the hidden laboratory and enter in the data to the mainframe that's monitoring the sector -else you can't get out because security has you locked down. But wait! some data is missing... you must find the trend in the data and approximate. Make your best guess so you can fool the computer and get outta there! Kids learn to do basic skills like graphing but then learn higher order skills like approximation. This leads to trend analysis (which they'll use in the next mission). And eventually in the last mission of the 5 mission linear equations pack, they learn to abstract the trend into a linear equation - fixing the fuel filter at a plasma generator of course! Then go online and play multiplayer to hone your skills at spotting trends and equations in a fast paced competition against your friends. You can have both, state standard problems and higher order thinking ; ) check em out at www.dimensionM.com. Let me know what you think. I'm happy to answer any questions about educational game development.
...I got locked out of my apartment. It was a stupid mistake: I was leaning out of the front door to drop the bag of garbage down the trash chute, and I didn't realize my roommate had pushed down the button that locks the door automatically.
So there I was, middle of February, in New York City, in my workout clothes (shorts, T-shirt, and socks -- but no shoes) with no keys, no phone, and no resources except my wits. My roommate was on a plane to Florida. So quick: what do I do?
I handled the situation (met some great neighbors, too) and was back into my apartment in 45 minutes. And after the adrenaline wore off, I realized: I handled this situation EXACTLY like I handle an adventure game.
What I have learned from gaming is problem-solving outside of the norm. I think of it now as rubber-chicken-with-a-pulley-in-the-middle thinking. I applied the correct methods of problem-solving -- what do I need? what do I have? how can I get the things I need and don't have? who are the relevant non-me people here? how do my surroundings help / hinder? -- but I didn't learn them from school, or even from my parents (who taught me a great many things). I learned them from the trail & error system of many, many years of questing in many different times of games and game worlds.
Exactly...team skills to prepare you for a position in corporate America.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Thank you for elucidating what I've been thinking for quite a long time.
It feels like the same mentality as those who would try to protect a child from all common germs and illnesses. It may seem like a caring thing to do at the time, but would, in fact, be a horrible thing for the child in the long run. Getting a cold ultimately strengthens our immune system, much like learning how to lose gracefully strengthens our social skills and teaches us humility.
Yes, it's important to protect our children. I've always disagreed with people who feel the need to expose kids to the harsh reality of life at an early age, but too many people go bonkers in the other direction as well. Let the kids enjoy their childhood, and stop with the nonsense that competition is something ugly and unhealthy.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Remember the "positive comments" teachers use to give us on papers?
1988: Excellent paper, Billy! Nice conclusion! A+
2008: wckd sck bily u p0wned conclud para
Billy Brown rides on. Yolanda Green bypasses Gary White.
The only reason I know anything about early settlers was because of Oregon Trail. It's because of that game that I realize killing 13 buffalo is wicked fun, but you can only carry so many pounds home, and that dysentery and cholrea will kill the fuck out of your family. I type really fast because of games like (not that game specifically, but games like it that I can't remember the name of).
I'm not saying that games like Trauma Center are the end-all beat-all educational omnibus, but they do play their part. That antibiotic salve cures everything!
So far, you have the only response that understands what I was getting at.
Not a typewriter
Offtopic I know but I just have to say... I just metamoderated this comment and if you're not in the service you have a much greater realistic world view than most civilians I know.
I apologize for the roundabout way to contact you, I just thought you should know that this is the MOST insightful comment I've ever read.
--beckerist
I've been thinking for a while about something along the lines of the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" as described in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age... there has to be a way of doing it with some smart agents (or insert appropriate name for semi-smart AI here) and tying in the information in wikipedia/google :)
The Diamond Age on wikipedia
My own blogpost about the topic
Life is a window... It just depends on what side you choose to be on...
There is no contradiction in teaching children maths and not telling them they suck at it when it goes wrong. In particular, I firmly believe that with the exception of some very specific learning impairments EVERYBODY can learn how to do the most basic algebra. Perhaps not everybody will be equally good at it, and perhaps some people will need more support than others, but teaching somebody how to solve a problem like (3/4) + (5/6) is not something that requires a great deal of talent or understanding. The reason some kids ( and even adults ) have trouble with these things is not that they suck at maths, it's that their PREVIOUS education was insufficient, that nobody explained it to them properly, or that nobody made sure they did their homework. Yes, some people may have very special conditions that make algebraic manipulations possible, but for the vast majority of cases the explanation for learning difficulties is a combination of a)Incompetent/inexperienced teachers b)Lack of experience c) lack of motivation / effort.
To pick an analogy, my spelling and grammar is horrid. At least in Swedish ( and I'm Swedish ). The reason is not that I'm bad at languages, or that the education was of the wrong form, or that our society was this or that. I simply never bothered to learn it, and I was never required to since I was never made to do it. From what I have seen going through several different education systems in three different countries, I have very little belief in a number of more "popular" explanations. The simple answer is that in many countries teaching budgets have been slashed, expectations of teachers and students have diminished, and rather than fixing the problem by allocating more resources, increasing requirements, and ceasing to fuck it up with reforms that can at best be described as snakeoil, politicians have pushed through bullshit policies in order to further their own political ideology ( you know the drill, the left wants to abolish grades and evaluation because it is apparently "unfair", the right thinks discipline and competition is the answer to everything ).
Seriously, todays children are not THAT different from children born 70 years ago. A chalk, blackboard, and lots of practice will still work. Computer games with a balanced content of male/female pronouns put in a liberal,conservative mismash of different examples of why maths is "cool" will not. Its not the kids that are the problem, it's the idiots that believe the same mathematical theorems that have been true ever since they were discovered need to be taught in an ever changing circus of farcical folk-dances and party games.
*Draws a coordinate system using the GREEN crayon*
I predict there will be a great intellectual divide (interestingly, bypass normal "class" restrictions) for those parents able to provide their children with the tools of higher learning (computer) compared to those who cannot/will not.
In this way, in classic darwinism, the strong will survive, and the weak will work at burger king. If you disagree, thats fine, take a chance that I'm wrong, alternatively, supply your child with the tools to succeed.
I was given a computer at a young age, and I have provided my daughter with the same benefit.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?