In pursuit of gaming knowledge in the electronic age

As a children’s librarian and mother of three, I practice the six early literacy skills with children nearly every day. I sing alphabet songs, perform silly puppet shows, and read them picture books before bedtime. I also belong to the minority group of parents who champion video games because I recognize their educational value. I’ve often become excited about the possibility of training children’s librarians in Second Life. There is no question that early literacy is moving into the electronic age. For the first time in my career, I’ve had two children in our library’s summer reading program ask me if electronic reading could be counted towards their reading goal.

I recently fielded a question from a parent looking for a list of current video games or software rated EC (early childhood) with early literacy elements—specifically letter knowledge. To my surprise, I had trouble finding such games on the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) Web page and other parent media sites. Where are all the video games for very young children? Parents who frequent our library and want to use video games to teach their children, ages 2 to 5, should be able to find them as easily as those who want to borrow books. As a youth advocate, I agree that children should have “equitable access to books and reading, to information and information technology that is safe and conducive to learning” (AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner).

The 7th Early Literacy Skill

It is recognized that print motivation, print awareness, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, vocabulary, and narrative skills are six early literacy skills identified as competencies that children must have before they can actually read and write. But, is there a 7th early literacy skill that is technology related? Can it be found in video games? Absolutely! As Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl, who have conducted extensive research relating to the cognitive development of babies, have proven, a new developmental stage (gaze-following in babies) could emerge decades after Piaget closed the books on identifying the developmental stages of children. Librarians should be in the information forefront to guide parents, a child’s first teachers, in this new technology-related literacy.

Console Games

In my search for video games that provided early literacy elements, I turned to the ESRB and realized that this organization rarely gave an EC rating to a software program, narrowly defining the early childhood designation as “containing no material that parents would find inappropriate.” As public librarians know, this is impossible since someone will always find something offensive in the books and the media we circulate. Consequently, the EC rating only applies to a handful of console video games that run on older platforms like the GameBoy Advance and the PS2. Complicate it with the fact that there is a proliferation of consoles and game toys from the Xbox 360 to the Nintendo Wii and the Smart Toy.

The ESRB would do well to redefine the EC rating to make it synonymous with edutainment. It would be useful for parents who confuse age-appropriateness with educational levels. It is no wonder that finding games with challenge levels for 2- to 5-year-olds involves a bit of cherry-picking. Those pressed for time undoubtedly turn to trustworthy publishers like Leapfrog and Scholastic.

The following games are appropriate for young children and teach early literacy skills.

Text and Learn. Leapfrog (leapfrog.com). Smart Toy. $22. Ages: birth to 12 months.

Smart Toy, a Blackberry-style handheld device designed to be comfortably clutched in the hands of young children, is actually a hybrid video game toy. Three learning modes and six activities allow toddlers to browse, use a calendar, and send pretend email. Letter knowledge is playfully introduced in a QWERTY keyboard layout. Words are demonstrated by an animated dog named Scout and associated with letters/words like kick, fast, happy, jumping, and love which can be found in the “High Frequency Word Lists” for the first grade curriculum. By touching the corresponding keypad, letters of the alphabet are pronounced and randomly displayed on the LCD in lower or upper case. EL Points: Vocabulary, Letter Knowledge. Other: Shape Recognition.

Digging for Dinosaurs. Leapfrog (leapfrog.com). Scholastic (avail. Aug. 2009). Leapster Learning Game System. $24.99. Ages: 5 to 8.

Learning games include “Feeding Time,” “On the Trail,” “Dinosaur Match,” and “Egg Alert.” Three levels of progressive difficulty with a point system can be used toward earning a total of 100 points at which time kids can dig for fossils with archaeological tools. Each time they reach the high score, they collect more bones to use toward building their own exhibit and the games start over with a new set of dinosaurs and facts. Assistance from parents may be required for children younger than 5. “Feeding Time” highlights vocabulary by introducing the names of dinosaurs, their diets, and behavior. EL Points: Vocabulary. Other: Logic, Reasoning, Spatial Organization.

My Amusement Park! Leapfrog (leapfrog.com). Scholastic (avail. Sept. 2009). Leapster Learning Game System. $24.99. Ages: 5 to 8.

A SIMs-style amusement park containing three game booths featuring “Dunk Tank,” “Horse Power, and “On Target.” Players build and maintain park attractions using logic and problem-solving skills. The game offers three challenge levels per activity. Particular attention should be paid to “Dunk Tank” which tests children’s letter knowledge and spelling. “On Target” fosters vocabulary building and shape and letter identification. EL Points: Print Awareness, Print Motivation.

Parents as Game Designers

While selecting tired-and-true titles is a win-win situation, the only drawback is that you can miss some hidden treasures. There’s a new generation of video game creators who are parents, self-publishers, and savvy technologists, among them the CEO of Sabi, Margaret Johnson, Leveractive’s Tim Leverett, and Digitell’s Giselle Uffens. They are all passionate about their contributions to learning. They have each devised technology to improve their own child’s learning—from empowering a child recovering from an illness to fostering a son’s curiosity about the keyboard to helping a daughter overcome shyness when reading aloud in class.

Giggles Computer Funtime for Baby: ABC’s & 123’s. Leveractive (giggles.net). Win/Mac. $19.99. (for in-house use only when purchased by libraries) Ages: 6 to 36 months.

Pique the interest of the youngest computer users when they explore the keyboard from your lap. Key-tapping corresponding with ABCs and 123s yields screen-sized letters and numbers with confetti “lettering the air.” It’s a real showstopper when your toddler learns to dance with the letters. Engaging activities range from balloon fun building blocks to singing along with Flopsy. Musical selections include classical, country, jazz, and piano. EL Points: Letter Knowledge, Vocabulary. Other: Number Knowledge, Cause and Effect.

Read Aloud Magic. Digitells. (digitells.com). PC/CD-ROM. $49.95. Ages: birth to 10.

Research has shown that with an instant acoustic voice-feedback device children can hear phonemes ten times more clearly as they learn to read picture books. Grandparents, parents, and kids alike can narrate their favorite picture books, add background noise and page-turn signals, recording them on a CD using the computer. Based on Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook, children will actually be practicing phonological awareness by reading aloud to an audience. EL Points: Narrative Skills, Phonological Awareness.

Itza Bitza. Sabi (itzabitza.com). PC/CD-ROM. $19.95. (for in-house use only when purchased by libraries) Ages: 4 to 8.

Beginning readers are introduced to five progressively more difficult levels from “Home Sweet Home” to “Haunted House.” Using an innovative technique called “living ink,” children use the mouse to draw interactive objects such as an open house, camping grounds and functional rocket ships for the “Sketchies.” Reading comprehension is facilitated by game flow. Words light up and are highlighted in red as they are read to children. Clear, large-type text in the speech balloons provide instructions to help players advance. EL Points: Print Awareness, Print Motivation.

Collaboration

Are the best video games for kids those that are extensions of parents? Or should these games be designed by well-established software or video game giants. It doesn’t make sense to pit one against the other. A collaborative atmosphere is ideal where dynamic communication between educators and developers can occur regularly, independent of platform. Arguably, I have taken only a one-dimensional approach in the video games mentioned above, extrapolating only early literacy elements without taking factors like game mechanics, physics, and execution into consideration. My primary goal was to determine whether the 7th early literacy variable could be isolated. At the end of my quest, it still remains elusively buried in the hundreds of titles with E (everyone) ratings or with no ratings at all. Early literacy should be the primary goal of any engaging video game aimed at 2- to 5-year-olds whether designed for a console, desktop, or toy. According to the American Association of School Librarians, it is crucial for all young readers that “multiple literacies, including visual, textual and technological, have now joined information literacy as crucial skills for this century.”

A new early literacy skill is evolving. It will take the collaboration of software developers, researchers, and parents to validate the field of gaming and learning. Early literacy continues to present itself in various manifestations as a necessity in young children’s lives, and now it’s inherent in many video games. For librarians, there’s no time to waste in putting the theoretical into practice. The software exists and parents have an information need—but how do we unite them? It needs to start with visibility and accessibility—a searchable database that extracts early literacy elements and edutainment descriptors from video games. Perhaps then we can grasp the 7th early literacy element, refine it for our children, and utilize its potential.