Teaching through video games

Last morning my son gleefully held up the newspaper and triumphantly waved it to my face and told me to read the article where the caption was "A video game a day, makes the child smarter all the way". As all parents are aware this is one of the issues among many that we parents have.

I was quite interested and went through and found that according to a new 'Kids and Gaming 2009' report from the NPD Group, among all children in the U.S aged 2-17, 82% or 55.7 million are aged 2-5, representing the smallest segment, while 12.4 million are aged 9-11, making up the largest segment. (Phew!! isn't that quite a huge number and I wonder about the 12-17 age group). The crux was that as children these days are hooked to playing long hours of video games, teachers are now trying to get students interested in molecular biology or space exploration, world culture and other topics through developing interesting video games. This they think serves dual purpose: that of children playing their games and at the same time learning these subjects too. Talk about having their cake and eating it too!

Atleast I wish that children might benefit by using these educational videos than playing the mindless games of counter strikes and whatnots.