This type of software is also much better for fast prototype and learning.

For Katherine, there are many low cost game engines that you can use, that also don’t need huge programming skills. Missionmaker is just one such example.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/primaryeducation/7823259/Ban-computers-from-schools-until-children-reach-age-9-says-expert.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1285981/TVs-PCs-dull-childrens-brains.html?ITO=1490

The Mail also covered it this week + Telegraph also wrote this a few weeks ago:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7793751/Nurseries-teaching-children-using-computers.html

This was my response (don’t know if anyone will publish):

Aric Sigman - is he a time traveller from the past?

My admittedly limited reading of history suggests that Ned Ludd might have had good cause to be smashing textile machinery in the 19th Century, and that the term Luddite is often misapplied in the context of technological critique. Yet it would be difficult to find a better term to describe Aric Sigman’s suggestion that computers should be banned from schools until children reach the age of 9 (as reported in your article by Julie Henry 13.6.01). Sigman’s arguments are fundamentally flawed as he fails to differentiate between computer hardware and computer software, and is clearly unaware of much of the high quality early childhood software currently available and in use in effective early childhood settings. Research does show that extended periods of passive TV viewing are potentially harmful and we can quite reasonably assume that that the same would apply to the passive application of computer programmes such as arcade games. But in his usual style of self publication, self promotion and punditry, Sigman applies a highly misleading selective citation of research to overstate his case for banning the use of computers in early childhood. Most significantly Sigman demonstrates his total ignorance of this developing field of specialist research. The most robust evidence on the subject shows that high quality computer applications provide effective support for early learning and development in precisely the areas of development that Sigman is concerned about. Quality computer applications encourage greater rather than less interaction between children, and between children and adults. They also encourage off screen ‘head and hands-on’ activity by the child so that the dichotomy that Sigman draws between the virtual and the 3D world is entirely false.

It is at best disengenous and at worse blatantly misleading to suggest that computer use in early childhood has been justified soley in terms of the child’s ‘interest’. At their best Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) play a valuable dual purpose in early childhood education: They provide powerful teaching and learning tools and they also provide children with an early introduction to technologies that should be recognised as as much a crucial a part of the cultural and educational contexts of the 21st Century as any other aspect of the natural or made environment.

This rant connects with my Watch with Mother blog:

http://www.madeinme.com/blog/category/theprofessor/

Unfortunately you even hear this sort of debate in academic circles, e.g. the bizarre ramblings of Greenfield on games.

Talking about games and robust research are both very welcome activities and long overdue. In respect of Brian training I don’t think, to their credit, Nintendo have ever claimed these games “improve overall brain power” that would be an extremely difficult statement to defend (and I’m not a neuro scientist). Some success has been claimed with using the games in UK schools , that success relates more (in my view) to the motivation to learn as a broad pedagogic activity as opposed to the specifc software used though.

It will be interesting to see how this “discussion” develops.