Are on line games good or bad?

Online Games have become more popular over the years. Although online games are played by every age group around the world, most of them are for kids and teenagers in the age range of 7 to 18 years old.

One of the silently killer features of the digital domain is the ability to experiment. Mess around. Play.

While you don’t need to be plugged in to play, access to simulations offer educators and learners powerful platforms to experiment in individual and group projects, testing theories, revising design, and rethinking problem-solving approaches.

And when you add gamification to the formula, suddenly progress can be tracked, success can be shared, and basic meta-cognitive functions can be practiced simply because everything is more visible, with badges and icons highlighting critical steps once thought to be unimportant.

There are a lot of stories and claims that online gaming is harmful and bad for kids, but is that really true?

There is no doubt that online games Develop Thinking Skills and a child’s IQ– A lot of games require IQ and strategy thinking to complete the game. When children play those games they will exercise and improve their skills and IQ. Playing games Improves languages and reading skills– Some online games have a lot of instructions that require children to read, which is  a good way to exercise the habit of reading and if the games are in English (which most are) they are an excellent way to improve a child’s language skills.

Gaming has shown to improve a persons Memory– instructions given online need to be remembered, if not the player will get stuck later on.Endurance and Perseverance– Runescape is one of the online games that can really exercise your patience. There are a lot of rewards on Runescape but that requires time and energy.
Faster Reactions and Thinking– Some online games require quick reactions to complete the game. For example ‘O2Jam’ is one of the online games where you need to click on random keys that they show on the screen as fast as possible.
“The non-gamers had to think a lot more and use a lot more of the workhorse parts of their brains for eye-hand coordination. Whereas the gamers really didn’t have to use that much brain at all, and they just used these higher cognitive centers to do it.”
On the negative side gaming has these attributes:
Violence– There are a lot of violent action games with bad language.
Children spend less time participating in Outdoor Activities.
Children can spend less time Interacting with their Family.
Bad Influence– Some children might meet different kinds of people on multi-player online games. These people may be a bad influence and introduce offensive language to other gamers. There are also problems of meeting Predators on-line who target these environments to meet children (see the articles on Internet Safety).
At the end of the day children love on-line games, so a balance has to be found to give children an all round experience of life.
Below you will find links to gaming sites and educational content, primarily for age ranges 6-11. The links are in White.

LEARN TO PROGRAM

Lightbot : Solve Puzzles using Programming Logic.

Code.org – Star Wars : Learn to program droids and create your own Star Wars game.

Scratch : Create stories, games, and animations. Share with others around the world.

OTHER LEARNING RESOURCES

Cbeebies : World famous children’s resource.

StarFall :  A free public service to teach children to read with phonics.

Web Wise : A step by step guide to using the internet, email and mobile devices.

Get Squiggling Magic Paintbox : Improve your English and have lots of fun.

Museum Tour : The Smithsonian National Museum of natural History.

Play a Game : Games for juniors.

Digger and Gang : Nash’s adventures.

Your Space, 5-7 Years : This is your page. You can create a picture, decide what you want to do when you’re older, or send an e-card.

CBBC : For children over 7 years of age.

e-Learning for kids : From 0-10 years of age.

Brain Games, Years 7-12 : Give yourself a mental workout.

Orisinal : Elegant beautifully designed games for ages 7-12.

Friv : Hundreds of games for ages 9-12.

Sesame Street : Needs no introduction.

Learn to Type : Meet the gang and learn to type. Make your way through all 12 stages and you can be a top typist.

BBC Schools : A huge portal of educational content for children of all ages and in all subjects. All content is matched to the UK national curriculum as required by the Ministry of Education and is free for anyone to use.

Khan Academy : A not-for-profit organization with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

National Geographic for Kids : National Geographic Kids is a children’s magazine published by the National Geographic Society.

Wall Street Survivor : How Gaming Can Be Used To Improve Financial Literacy

Financial literacy is strangely absent in most K-12 curriculum, and even those within higher-ed if not in an economics or business-specific program. The 21st century digital playground is offering more and more opportunity to understand this area.

Wall Street Survivor & Bunchball

Gamification pioneer Bunchball is partnering with stock market simulation software company Wall Street Survivor to enhance the game mechanics and transparency of the software.

The game essentially allows you to participate in stock market transactions with imagined funds. In addition to the aforementioned gamification mechanics, there are also social dynamics as well–following other users to see how they invest, and how they are doing. (Modeling FTW!)