Today’s children are bombarded with a fast-paced world delivered in high-speed and high definition, leaving most parents scrambling to find television shows and video games that pack an educational punch, allowing them to sidestep the violence and bad language, while providing children with learning tools that deliver real-life results.

In fact, in the recently-released book “How Computer Games Help Children Learn,” author and former teacher, curriculum developer, teacher trainer, and school technology specialist, David Williamson Shaffer makes a convincing case for the educational power of intelligently crafted games that can serve as tools to help children think and learn about every day problems and solutions.

According to the book, the key is in finding fun video games that provide an immersive entertainment experience with learning fundamentals built in.

Many parents are already doing this with television shows, such as Dora the Explorer and the spin-off show about her younger cousin Diego. Watching these fun, educational shows, children learn about other languages, how to treat each other, about animals and the environment, and so much more.

“They’re having so much fun that they don’t realize they are learning,” explains Dawn Walker, who is completing her Master’s in Early Childhood Education and is also a mother of two-and-a-half-year-old twin boys.

“They learn their ABCs, counting, and even how to interact with other children and how to work as part of team by watching shows like those with Dora and Diego. What’s more, my boys can now say their full alphabet and count to 20 in both English and Spanish, which I credit in part to these educational television shows.”

But given that our world is increasingly high tech, will television shows be enough? Will parents need to turn to specially developed video games (also called epistemic games) that prepare their children for the inevitable dealings with software, while providing them with skills they can put to use both in childhood and adulthood?

“Deep learning, technical learning, learning that leads to the ability to innovate: these are the most important natural resources in our global high-tech world,” explains James Paul Gee, University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy,” and who wrote the forward for Shaffer’s book. “Will our children be able to compete with kids in China and India?” he asks.

What does Gee recommend? He recommends that parents follow Shaffer’s lead and learn “how to mine the potential of video game technologies to transform learning at home, in communities, and in schools.”

And Gee and Shaffer are not alone in their thinking or in their belief that our seemingly outdated educational system needs to be brought back to the forefront with interactive technologies that keep learning as fun as it is cutting edge.

Marc Prensky, an educational software developer, is also pro-game. In “Don’t Bother Me Mom—I’m Learning!“, Prensky maintains that kids “are almost certainly learning more positive, useful things for their future from their video and computer games than they learn in school!”

It’s about expanding our existing concepts of learning in ways that promote increased productive, additional curiosity and, best of all for children, fun.

And parents can help make this possible by choosing video games that help their children learn problem-solving skills and hand-eye coordination, as well as skill sets specific to areas where they may express an interest.

Take, for example Zoo Tycoon 2, a game where players own and manage an entire zoo; purchase animals, build exhibits, keep visitors happy, generate income and much more.

Or the United Nations Food Force project. In this game players have to save and rebuild the fictitious island of Sheylan, all the while learning about how the UN World Food Program operates.

Indeed, as David Williamson Shaffer writes in his book - “The books, video games, and movies of children’s culture today demand strategic thinking, technical language, and sophisticated problem-solving skills.”

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