What are the memories of childhood that keep coming back to you? Oftentimes, they are of the first movie we saw. Movies are profound (and often intense) experiences for first-timers. Think back to your first visit to a cinema: whether it was a public screening or a private viewing at home, when the lights went out and the movie came up, you were alone in your own experience. This great gift of cinema helps create those memories that are so clearly affixed in our minds.

Now do you think that memory from your childhood, that cornerstone in the foundation of your life, influenced who you are today? If you’re were a kid in America in the 70s who turned on the Afterschool Specials on Wednesdays at 3:30pm when they were playing foreign films, chances are that is why you are tuning into KidConfidence and this blog today. And look at how similar things around us are to the 70s.

Cinema has always played a large part in the memory of our American society. Those 70s kids’ parents spent entire afternoons in the cinema for a nickel watching Betty Grable, Clark Gable and the stars of the 40s and 50s. Their parents remember the advent of the “Talkie.” No doubt, vivid memories of cinema days were passed on. But with so much media at our fingertips today, parents have to make more careful choices about providing the opportunities for those memories. What is the exposure that is going to make the lasting impression and perhaps plant seeds that continue to inspire your child as her or she progresses to adulthood?

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KidConfidence Editor Cola had the unique opportunity to suit up and take a PhaseSpace motion capture system for a test drive.

PhaseSpace optical motion capture systems are the industry’s price / performance leader for motion tracking and position sensing. By using active LED markers and advanced software, PhaseSpace systems provide highly accurate, real time data with a minimum of occlusion and dropout errors.

“Nintendo’s Motion-sensing Wii-mote is cool, but wait until motion capture technology will allow us to control games in a whole new way… I can’t wait” said Cola after her stellar performance as Bird and Rhino.

The entertainment industry, with 3D animated movies, animated TV programs, and games, is perhaps the most visible and recognized user of motion capture technology today. Films such as The Polar Express, The Lord of the Rings, and The Matrix have shown the power of this technology in bringing to life the artistic dreams of authors, animators, and filmmakers.

Watch our Video Interview below for more.

Videosize: 5.7MB

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“How do children and adults talk about subjects differently after they experience them in games”? This is only one of many questions Dr. Ian Bogost tries to answer in his current research.

Dr. Ian Bogost is a game designer, academic game researcher, and educational publisher. Currently, Dr. Bogost is Assistant Professor at The Georgia Institute of Technology, where he researches on videogame criticism and videogame rhetoric and teaches in the undergraduate program in Computational Media and the graduate program in Digital Media.

KidConfidence interviewed Dr. Bogost to get his opinion on “Game Criticism”; “What age kids should be to start playing games” and “What direction future research should go to develop more meaningful videogames”? You can listen to the interview by clicking on our Podcast logo below.

Dr. Bogost is also a founding Partner of Persuasive Games.
Persuasive Games has become known for its ingenious games on controversial topics such as consumer culture, pollution, corporate greed, foreign affairs and homeland security. The games have been featured on ABC News, USA Today and the New York Times. Visit Persuasive Games for links to playable demos.

Thanks to developers like Persuasive Games and individuals such as Ian Bogost, Computer and Videogames become not only socially excepted as new form of entertainment, but also become a media to encourage critical thinking while serving as interface and context for the education of a new generation.

Bogost’s third book from MIT Press is due out in July. Subtitled The Expressive Power of Video Games, the book examines the unique ways in which video game language can persuade and make meaning.

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More great coverage of the GDC and Serious Games Summit from Thomas and Cola. Today they talked with Dan Roy, who presented Labyrinth: Keeping the Play in Learning Games at the summit.

Dan is an educational game designer with MIT’s Education Arcade, and has been studying games for more than 15 years. In the interview, Cola asks for his views on video games as a learning tool for children. Here are some excerpts:

When asked about the relationship between learning and video games, Mr. Roy compared the learning process in schools to the learning process in games. Too many students get turned off by traditional school, homework, social pressure, etc. But video games can help people see the relevancy of a topic, give them motivation, and help them enjoy learning and see it as a fun activity. And not every challenge in a game is necessarily “fun”, but once you get hooked on a problem, you want to solve it.

Dan says one of the primary reasons that games don’t get used more in schools is that the current educational structure is very focused on testing due to the No Child Left Behind act. We need to explore how games can be used to measure what people are learning if we want greater acceptance in schools. We don’t really know how to “test” a student via games, even though the way games work this would not be hard to do. (ed: See How Computer Games Help Children Learn for more about our educational system and how computer games can help to improve it.)

What can developers do to make games both fun and educational? Well, Mr. Roy says that past approaches were built on the thought - hey, let’s take something fun, then we’ll break it up and put some learning in there every so often. This can really take away from the playability of the game and people choose to play the fun games instead. He says we need an approach where the #1 goal - learning - is integrated with the fun. He goes on to provide some examples of how they are having teams of players interact with each other during the game, while learning to write and express their ideas better.

Be sure to listen to the podcast to hear Podcast: Interview with Dan Roy. (4:17)

Thanks for your time and insights Dan!

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In Thomas and Cola’s continued coverage of the GDC in San Francisco, their second interview is with Jessica Hammer, Ph.D. Candidate at Columbia University. Ms. Hammer’s presentation today was titled Serious Games: A Preparation for Future Learning Approach.

Thomas and Cola caught up with Jessica after her presentation for this interview where they asked for her views on video games as a learning tool for children. I’ve included some excerpts of the interview below, but be sure to listen to podcast: Interview with Jessica Hammer for the full interview (8:23).

Ms. Hammer has worked as a game designer and social software consultant. She saw the potential of video games as a learning tool right away while working on Zoo Media Rescue: an adventure game that teaches kids basic math skills (ed: sorry, I can’t find a link to the game.) Jessica says that games have an underlying structure; a set of rules, ideas and objects that have complex relationships to each other and can model some things from real life.

But game play doesn’t have to be educational in terms of modeling. She observes that the way passionate game players engage with games can be very powerful. They do research, talk with friends, and in some cases bring the scientific method to life in a way that most kids don’t do in other aspects of life. Part of the reason is that in the real world, the stakes for failure are very high. In video games, it is ok to try things over and over until you get it right. People who are engaged in games not only learn what the game itself teaches, but they also learn a lot by the way they engage with the game.

I’ve seen this in my own experience with my 7 year old daughter, Abby. We’ve been playing a game called Viva Pinata on the XBox 360. In this game you are put in charge of building and cultivating a garden as conditions change. As you plant certain seeds and things grow, they attract different types of cute Pinata creatures who may become “residents” of your garden and make it their home. Well, you also attract some not-so-nice creatures to the garden, including one fellow named “Dastardos” who can mess up your garden and make things difficult for you.

We set limits on how much time she can spend playing video games, and in between the times she actually gets to play, she is constantly thinking about new strategies and ideas for her next session. She asks me things like “How can we get rid of Dastardos?” “What kind of seeds do we need to plant to attract a Sparrowmint?” We even did some research on the web together to find out that we could create a jack-o-lantern out of a pumpkin to tame a Sherbat, to hold off Dastardos. It was a fun way to do some “problem solving” and “research” together, and it never felt like work to either of us!

Indeed, as Ms. Hammer said in the interview, “Video games can provide experiences just as rich socially and intellectually as other types of activities.”

Thanks for your time and insights Jessica!

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