Good News Concerning Children's Video Games by Valli L. Schieltz

Research that has been published by two leading neuroscientists of the University of Rochester has grabbed national attention because they suggested that playing "action" video games have positive effects. They seem to enhance a student's visual selective attention. That is just one small part of the more important message, namely, that video games are not the enemy. Rather they are the best opportunity we have to engage children in real learning.
Any observer knows that the attitude a child has to video and computer games is much different to the attitude he or she has towards school. Years ago, you found that mostly adolescent boys played the video and computer games. However, now it would be difficult to find any child in America who does not play video or computer games of some sort.
The evidence is mounting that our children's brains are changing to accommodate these new technologies. They are better at taking in information faster, better at parallel processing, collaborating over networks and understanding multimedia. What attracts kids to the video games of today is not the violence or the surface subject matter, but the learning that the games provide. Children, like all humans, love to learn when it is not thrust upon them.
On the surface children learn to do things such as drive fast cars, fly airplanes and war fighters, be theme park operators, veterinarians and civilization builders. On the deeper level, the children learn much more such as to make decisions quickly, to find out how to play a game from deduction rather than being told, create strategies for overcoming obstacles, and to be able to understand complex systems through experimentation.
Today's game-playing child goes into the first grade being able to do and understand many complex things - from flying, to building to reasoning. An emerging coalition of writers, academics, foundations, game designers and even the U.S. Military is working to make both educators and parents aware of the very great potential for learning contained in the gaming medium. Academic research into the positive effects that video and computer games have on learning is now being noticed by national media.
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