Tag Archives: video games

We are very excited to share new research produced by UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight as part of the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) initiative. The Cooney Center was fortunate to hear insights from the researchers as the report was being finalized. From a Cooney Center perspective, there are several things that we love about it: Many initiatives work to create a framework and then leave it there. The RITEC initiative developed the RITEC-8…

I started working at the Cooney Center out of college and grew to be the Research and Program Manager for the National STEM Video Game Challenge—a role that took me from Pittsburgh to the White House. As the Challenge grew, so did I. I was determined to understand how to guarantee positive outcomes from kids’ technology use. After lengthy conversations with my mentors at the Cooney Center, I pursued a dual PhD/MBA between Oxford and Yale focused on technology and…

The following is an excerpt from Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to School and Emotional Learning by Matthew Farber and appears here courtesy of publisher Peter Lang.   In the early 1980s, video gaming often meant arcades, quick experiences designed to eat kids’ quarters. These games provided quick thrills, little in the way of nuanced emotion. Similarly, film was also fairly basic when introduced at the turn of the 20th century. Famously (at least according to legend), in 1895, the…

The “stay safe online” message is being heard loud and clear – but these young gamers can see beyond “don’t talk to strangers”. The “By Gamers, For Gamers” Project was developed by the Alannah & Madeline Foundation in Australia. The project was initially conceived by adults to be co-designed and developed in close partnership with young people. The intention was to gather the advice and experience of gamers aged 15-18 years, and then share that advice in their own words…

Throughout the past year, everyone has experienced pandemic stress. But parents have been particularly vulnerable because of the additional work associated with managing children, especially for those parents trying to continue to work at their jobs. There have been many new studies about the ways that pandemic stress has impacted parents’ mental health. While people turn to a variety of tools to cope with pandemic stress, our study focuses on using entertainment media, specifically video games, as a coping tool. Using…

Billions of people around the world play video games, making gaming one of the most popular forms of entertainment today. Yet while we know there are many positive aspects to video games for learning and play, many still worry that they could also be bad for us. Video games have been accused of making players violent, isolated, dumb, or addicted. But what does academic research actually say? This is what I discuss in my most recent book, The Psychology of…

For the fourth part of this series, we asked experts to focus their predictions on digital play by answering the question, “How will the way children play with digital media change in the coming months and/or years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic?” Parents and kids will learn to play together Jesse Schell is CEO of Schell Games and Distinguished Professor of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. Videogames represent a significant divide between parents and kids. Kids are…

“For me, my kids playing Halo is no different than playing outside and coming up with scenarios that seem kind of violent like our kids… they could be outside playing Nerf guns and pretending to shoot each other and die. I can go outside and play Nerf guns with my kids and we can be playing in the neighborhood. And I don’t get questioned about that, but I get questioned about Halo.” —Abigail, a mother of four daughters Between the…

The potential of digital games for education is enhanced by the fact that digital games are everywhere. In 2008, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 97 percent of those ages 12–17 played computer, web, portable, or console games, and 50 percent of them reported daily or near-daily gameplay. Another Pew study reported that digital games generated $25 billion in sales in 2010. Studies have demonstrated the potential of digital games to support learning through conceptual understanding, process skills and practices, and…

Children today have access to more devices and platforms than ever before. And that means they have access to more entertainment software too. Over the past few years there have been a number of studies looking at video games and children, from how games affect the brain and motivation to learn. With the Digital Games and Family Life series, the Cooney Center has been digging into what parents of children ages 4-13 really think about their children’s game play. A majority…