Re:

[jackofallgeeks]

When it rains it pours: more school-related news. There's a school in
England (I think, can't confirm that from my limited knowledge) that's run
a test
that appears to show that 20 minutes on a "brain training" game for
the Nintendo DS improves students' behavior, cooperation skills, and
learning ability. Kids aged five and six were given the game to play for
twenty minutes at the beginning of each school day for ten weeks. Teachers
noticed a marked improvement in the areas noted.

Now, I'm an avid gamer, born and bred on Nintendo, so I'm both a little
biased toward the merits of video games and sensitive to the flack they
get. Teachers, it seems, tend to have a particularly negative opinion of
video games, and i'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps they would argue that
they see the results of such things more regularly that leyfolk, but I
certainly don't hear nearly as much railing against TV and movies as
I do against video games. I've even found that, in some, simply mentioning
kids and video games is enough to illicit a snear.

It's notable, of course, that the game in question here isn't Mario Brothers
or World of Warcraft: it's a game specifically made to engage the mind and
stretch intellectual muscles. That is, it's a special case. But it still
makes me smile to be able to point to this and say, "see? Games CAN help."