flickr/Sean Dreilinger

Girls should play more video games.

That’s one of the unexpected lessons I take away from a rash of recent studies on the importance of—and the malleability of—spatial skills.

First, why spatial skills matter: The ability to mentally manipulate shapes and otherwise understand how the three-dimensional world works turns out to be an important predictor of creative and scholarly achievements, according to research published this month in the journal Psychological Science. The long-term study found that 13-year-olds’ scores on traditional measures of mathematical and verbal reasoning predicted the number of scholarly papers and patents these individuals produced three decades later.

But high scores on tests of spatial ability taken at age 13 predicted something more surprising: the likelihood that the individual would develop new knowledge and produce innovation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the domains collectively known as STEM.

The good news is that spatial abilities can get better with practice. A meta-analysis of 217 research studies, published in the journal Psychological Science last year, concluded that “spatial skills are malleable, durable and transferable”: that is, spatial skills can be improved by training; these improvements persist over time; and they “transfer” to tasks that are different from the tasks used in the training.

This last point is supported by a study published just last month in the Journal of Cognition and Development, which reported that training children in spatial reasoning can improve their performance in math. A single twenty-minute training session in spatial skills enhanced participants’ ability to solve math problems, suggesting that the training “primes” the brain to tackle arithmetic, says study author and Michigan State University education professor Kelly Mix.

Findings like these have led some researchers to advocate for the addition of spatial-skills training to the school curriculum. That’s not a bad idea, but here’s another way to think about it: the informal education children receive can be just as important as what they learn in the classroom. We need to think more carefully about how kids’ formal and informal educational experiences fit together, and how one can fill gaps left by the other.

If traditional math and reading skills are emphasized at school, for example, parents can make sure that spatial skills are accentuated at home—starting early on, with activities as simple as talking about the spatial properties of the world around us. A 2011 study from researchers at the University of Chicago reported that the number of spatial terms (like “circle,” “curvy,” and “edge”) parents used while interacting with their toddlers predicted how many of these kinds of words children themselves produced, and how well they performed on spatial problem-solving tasks at a later age.

As kids grow older, much of the experience they get in manipulating three-dimensional objects comes from playing video games—which brings us back to the contention at the start of this article. Males have historically held the advantage over females in spatial ability, and this advantage has often been attributed to genetic differences. But males’ spatial edge may also reflect, in part, differences in the leisure-time activities of boys and girls, activities that add up to a kind of daily drill in spatial skills for boys.

If that’s the case, then offering girls more opportunities to practice their spatial skills may begin to close the spatial-skills gender gap—and produce more female scientists, engineers and mathematicians in the bargain. So suggests a study by University of Toronto researchers, published in the journal Psychological Science. They found that playing an action video game “can virtually eliminate” the gender difference in a basic capacity they call spatial attention, while at the same time reducing the gender difference in the ability to mentally rotate objects, a higher-level spatial skill.

Exposure to video games, the authors conclude, “could play a significant role as part of a larger strategy designed to interest women in science and engineering careers.” Participants with little prior video-game exposure “realized large gains after only ten hours of training,” they note, adding that “we can only imagine the benefits that might be realized after weeks, months, or even years of action-video-gaming experience.”

Parents of daughters may blanch at the idea of actually encouraging “years” of action video game play. These moms and dads should tell themselves that their daughters aren’t wasting their time—they’re readying themselves for brilliant careers as scientists and engineers.

Annie Murphy Paul is a book author, magazine journalist, consultant and speaker who helps people understand how we learn and how we can do it better. A contributing writer for Time magazine, she writes a weekly column about learning for Time.com, and also blogs about learning at CNN.com, Forbes.com, MindShift.com, PsychologyToday.com and HuffingtonPost.com. She contributes to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among many other publications. She is the author of The Cult of Personality, a cultural history and scientific critique of personality tests, and of Origins, a book about the science of prenatal influences. She is now at work on Brilliant: The New Science of Smart, to be published by Crown in 2013.

This is the first installment of a series featuring the winners of the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge. Stay tuned for a new profile of each of our student winners each week!

Brianna Igbinosun is the winner of the Scratch-High School category of the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge.

We’re not sure if it was Brianna’s drive, clever strategizing, or keen shirt-designing skills that helped her clinch the title of Best Scratch High School game in the National STEM Video Game Challenge, but we’re happy to introduce you to Brianna Igbinosun and to share her game with you!

A 10th grader from Lawrenceville, GA, she describes herself as hard-working and goal-oriented. “If I start something, I need to finish.” And it is that drive that helped her work for over eight months on her entry to the National STEM Video Game Competition.

Brianna, the Scratch High School winner, designed I F.L.Y., a literacy game to both teach and help students practice French and Spanish. The player is introduced to French and Spanish vocabulary words and then must use the words in context while saving one of three themed worlds.

A teacher originally introduced Brianna to the STEM Challenge, but she wasn’t sure if she should enter. She had already won the Georgia Tech Scratch competition, but a National competition felt a bit out of reach…until a classmate said that he was going to enter. Brianna acknowledges that she can be a little competitive and “I knew that if he could do it, I could too!”

I F.L.Y, by Brianna Igbinosun

When asked why she chose to develop a language game, Brianna explained that it was part of her strategy, “I thought about the types of games kids were making [math, science, health, community, and literacy] and couldn’t decide what to make, but then I realized that fewer kids would probably make a language game. And, if I made a language game, I could probably get the judges’ attention!”

To keep herself interested throughout the lengthy development process, Brianna taught herself French and Spanish. “I’m learning German in school, but it would get boring if I just used what I knew and learning the languages would make teaching them more fun!”

And languages aren’t the only things she’s taught herself. Inspired by the other winners, she has decided to teach herself some other game development tools. “I figure I’m pretty much as good as I can be at Scratch if I’ve won a national competition, I really want to see what other stuff can offer and challenge myself to make amazing games on that too.”

Brianna has been using Scratch since she attended a Georgia College Tech camp the summer after 5th grade. After that first taste, she was hooked on game design, robotics, and programming. She continued tinkering with Scratch and computer programming, while making her own mini-games, an interest she pursued in a Computing in the Modern World camp she enrolled in.

In general, she describes herself as a STEM nerd. Lucky for her, she finds math “plain and simple. I love how many equations and theorems that you can solve. There are so many elegant ways to get the answer and it all just fits together. Math is endlessly entertaining. ” Brianna loves learning about the insides of computers and finds binary numbers fascinating. “I can’t wait to learn more about how they work.”

When not playing with computers, Brianna loves to read and is a “music fanatic”– she particularly enjoys music from the 80s and 90s. She is very involved in her church, has been playing the cello for six years and enjoys hanging out with friends.

When asked about her future plans, Brianna admits to a long-standing obsession with MIT. She hopes to major in Computer Science and minor in Math. But for now, she is just excited to win the STEM Challenge. While she confesses that her parents might be prouder than she is, “They’re totally blasting it to EVERYONE at church and all our friends,” she was thrilled to see the number of results for her game on Google. “I put my name in…and stuff came up! It was SO COOL!”

Well Brianna, we think you’re so cool! Congratulations on winning the STEM Challenge!

For four glorious days, industry mingled and held hands with research at the 2013 Interaction Design and Children’s Conference, which took place from June 24-June 27 in New York City. This year, Sesame Workshop co-hosted the conference with The New School, a strategic move that further extended the conference’s efforts to bring together industry and research. I had the pleasure to attend the conference this year, where I saw four prominent themes:

Attendees at the Enhancing Children’s Voices through Digital Media workshop, co-hosted by the Cooney Center.

We can be friends
As mentioned, researchers and practitioners intertwined at this year’s conference. Sesame Workshop helped launch the conference with a humorous and inspiring presentation from Sesame’s Bert (a true treat for the attendees!), CEO Melvin Ming, and SVP of Education and Research Rosemarie Truglio about the Workshop’s research and interaction projects. The trend of industry cohosting with research will continue next year at IDC 2014 with LEGO and Aarhus University.

Let them Make….!

A consistent theme throughout the conference and a majority of the presentations was the importance of making. The conference started off with hands-on design activities at the New York Hall of Science, where attendees of all ages made circuits and programmed arduinos. Two of the workshops on Monday were “Digital Fabrication and Making in Education” and “Interactive Technologies that Enhance Children’s Creativity.” And several paper sessions focused on different methods of making like programming and collaborative art. Scratch, a tile-based visual programming environment and toolkit targeted towards kids, announced their new ScratchJr web and iPad app. Paulo Blikstein, a professor at Stanford University, spoke about different constructionist toolkits. He noted that designers should provide relevant scaffolding and pay attention to the children we’re designing for so we can appeal to them with more age-appropriate toolkits. He also emphasized that we are not “training a workforce, but training a think force!” The theme was topped off by a Tribute Panel on Seymour Papert, where panelists including Allison Druin from University of Maryland, Edith Ackermann and Mitch Resnick from MIT, and others, spoke about Papert’s groundbreaking work in constructionist learning.

Give them the voice and means
Making and creating is one way to give children a voice. David Monina Sengeh highlighted this through his presentation as the conference’s keynote speaker. A doctoral student at the MIT Media Lab, David was joined by three students from Sierra Leone to talk about their experiences with creating their own DIY projects. He emphasized how it is crucial to focus on young kids who did not grow up in a culture that depends on external actors and low self-efficacy. Doing so will allow the culture to evolve into one that is inspired to act and make themselves. Essentially, our responsibility is to create spaces that enable children to change their world.

Design universally
Speaking of creating things that enable children to change their world, a heavy part of the conference focused on designing for all children, especially those with special needs. There were sessions on interpersonal communication in special educational needs classrooms, using music with those who have complex needs, and games for children with autism.

Other highlights included hand-drawn visualizations of the conference, a visit from Cookie Monster at the New York Hall of Science’s evening reception, and poster presentations from all over the world—several of which were done by our new fellow for next year, Jason Yip! Check out images, videos and other information from the conference at the main site: http://idc2013.org/.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and E-Line Media are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge. This year, we received close to 4,000 entries — and not only did more students enter the competition than in previous years, but their games were more complex, challenging and creative than ever before. We were blown away by the energy that students put into their games, the number of platforms they used to develop them (over 15!) and the support that they received from the hundreds of teachers and mentors that got involved.

In their entries, students showed remarkable ingenuity when designing both educational and non-educational games. From spelling to history to math and more, entrants developed games to teach their favorite subjects: in fact, 46% of students designed educational games. When asked why, many competitors said that they wished they could use games in the classroom or to teach their peers about their interests. One of the winners created a game about sustainable energy, hoping to teach others about her passion for the environment.

Not only were students’ games more focused on learning, a higher percentage of students reported using games in the classroom or games with their teacher than ever before. Over 56% of competitors designed their game with a teacher’s help. One entrant noted how his teacher related the design process to his STEM subject material.

This year, the Challenge managed to reach students from U.S. territories across the world and in both rural and urban areas. Along with increased geographic diversity, the challenge touched students previously unexposed to game design and more women than ever before. Many participants, including a few of the winners, told us that they had not thought of creating their own games until they heard of the Challenge and realized that they too could be designers. Kudos to the teachers and mentors who helped all of these budding designers explore their creativity.

We were also impressed that many students used the “Written” category to begin exploring design and STEM subjects; and now, many of these entrants report that they are building prototypes of their games. Students were also inspired to publish their games for the public to play. A number of winners and entrants have recently released their games commercially, citing the Challenge as inspiring them to consider game design as a career.

The STEM Challenge would not have been such a great success without the energy and support from this year’s partners and sponsors, including Microsoft, the Entertainment Software Association, and the AMD Foundation — leaders whose efforts to inspire and educate youth have provided us all with great energy. As Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the ESA notes, “Video games can be the spark that ignites a passion for STEM learning in tomorrow’s leaders. We are proud to work with these remarkable leaders in education, childhood development, and business. These nationally respected partners understand and appreciate video games’ ability to inspire, educate, and improve the lives of America’s children.”

Competitions like the National STEM Video Game Challenge provide a creative and innovative approach to STEM learning. “AMD is proud to co-sponsor the National STEM Video Game Challenge for the third consecutive year because it parallels our signature education initiative, AMD Changing the Game. Both enable youth to develop their own games to tackle social issues, which makes STEM learning engaging and fun,” said Susan Moore, Director, Global Public Affairs.

We are also grateful to our national community sponsors the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Hive Digital Media Learning Fund in The New York Community Trust.

As we’ve spoken to competitors and winners over the past few weeks, we’ve been struck by the stories we’ve heard about games and learning, students teaching themselves to code, and more. Over the summer, we will be rolling out a series of blog posts, each of which will highlight a winning game or participant. Facilitating this competition has introduced the Center to a number of new ways of using games for learning, and we look forward to sharing them with you this summer.

We would like to congratulate our winners and all of the students that submitted games. We will be announcing the finalists later this month. If you entered the competition and would like feedback on your game, please contact us.

Click here to view the winners’ names, game descriptions, and screenshots. You can also view the Press Release.