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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds - From H1Z1 Mod to Stand-Alone Game

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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds - From H1Z1 Mod to Stand-Alone Game

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Posted By: Joseph Mitchell
5/12
CRAAP- 46

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BlueHole has partnered with PlayerUnknown to take the H1Z1 player mod, Battle Royale, to make it into a stand alone game. Now called PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the game will expand on the idea in new ways. We chatted with PlayerUnknown to learn more about the partnership with BlueHole and what it means to Battlegrounds.

MMORPG: What was the inspiration in making BATTLEGROUNDS? Why this sort of game when there seem to be new ones all the time?

PLAYERUNKNOWN: It has always been my plan to create a standalone version of my mod. While having my game-mode included in H1Z1 really helped create a new genre of games, it was still, at the end of the day, their game.

And yes, while there seem to be many other titles in production that are implementing a Battle Royale-type system, none of them is what I had first envisioned a standalone version would be, hence why I am making BATTLEGROUNDS.

MMORPG: How will BATTLEGROUNDS be different from the others like King of the Kill, ARK: Survival of the Fittest, etc.?

PLAYERUNKNOWN: At its core, our game will follow the system I created in Arma 3 Battle Royale. We intend to have a larger weapon selection, an attachment system, and other elements familiar to Arma Battle Royale players. We are also working on leaderboards with an ELO-based ranking system, in-game replays of all rounds and other features that will help provide a great framework for competitive play.

MMORPG: How does strategy play into the game, not just killing ability?

PLAYERUNKNOWN: We will have an in-depth loot system, which will allow players to level up their character throughout the game. This includes varying levels of armor, head protection, and as I mentioned previously, an attachment system that will allow players to greatly improve the weapon they are using.

MMORPG: What steps are you taking to ward off cheating?

PLAYERUNKNOWN: The team at Bluehole has a lot of experience dealing with cheaters in previous projects and while I know it is hard to stop 100% of cheats in-game, I feel we have a good plan of attack in this regard. From experience, I find it is best not to reveal much about these measures so you will probably not hear much about our protection system, but we have one in place.

MMORPG: Let's say you win, what kind of rewards or player progression will there be besides bragging rights?

PLAYERUNKNOWN: We are still discussing how this will work, so I don't want to say anything at this stage as nothing is concrete right now.

MMORPG: There's 64 players per match. Do you see more being possible?

PLAYERUNKNOWN: This is related to the question of strategy in my opinion. Having a larger number of players will increase the luck factor at the start of a round. While our game may have less of an intense start compared with other games in the genre, I feel to create a truly strategic game we must limit the player numbers to begin with.

MMORPG: How about maps? Are there many, variations?

PLAYERUNKNOWN: We currently have a single 8km-by-8km map for players to compete on. We are creating a realistic world - maps like this can take 6-9 month to complete, so it is just not possible for us to have more than one for launch.

MMORPG: When can players expect to see a beta?

PLAYERUNKNOWN: We are hoping to enter beta testing towards the end of this year.

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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds - From H1Z1 Mod to Stand-Alone Game a Interviews at MMORPG.com

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BlueHole has partnered with PlayerUnknown to take the H1Z1 player mod, Battle Royale, to make it into a stand alone game. Now called PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the game will expand on the idea in new ways. We chatted with PlayerUnknown to learn more about the partnership with BlueHole and what it means to Battlegrounds.

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The 10 greatest players in esports history

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The 10 greatest players in esports history

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Posted By: Joseph Mitchell
5/12
CRAAP- 46

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Ever since gamers could first go head-to-head in video games like 1962's Spacewar and 1972's Pong, gaming has been the stage for an endless competition. That competition began to attract attention-and money-in the United States during the 1980s. Across the globe, electronic contests grew in size and spectacle in the '90s, and then exploded in the new millennium.

Many millions of players flocked to the most competitive games- Quake, Street Fighter, , Counter-Strike, League of Legends and more-where competition is so organized, popular, and skill-intensive that it has earned the name " esports."

Esports is global industry supported by sponsors, teams, leagues, fans and, of course, the professionals who compete at the highest levels and make a living from prize winnings and endorsement deals.

Who are the most important players in esports history, and how can we evaluate them? How can the best Street Fighter player from 1992 be put up against the top Dota 2 team in 2013?

Though they made their marks on different games during different eras, these 10 players possess a combination of skill, star power, and influence on esports history that makes them the greatest of all time. They've pushed their teams, their games, and all of esports into new territory.

It would be impossible to put these people head to head-but that's the fun of an all-time top 10 list. It's meant to start a conversation. Comparing players across different times and games is an invitation to debate.

10) Grubby

For 10 years, Grubby has been a happy warrior.

Manuel Schenkhuizen, now a 30-year-old Dutch pro gamer, first made his name as one of the best and most famous Warcraft 3 players of all time. At age 17, he won his first tournament (for €200) in his home country. He became the smiling face of 4Kings, one of the iconic esports teams of the mid-2000s, claimed over 30 gold medals in major events-including six world championships-earned an all-time record seven nominations for Esports Awards and, perhaps most incredibly, stood out against the nearly invincible South Korean and Chinese hegemony in strategy games.

Esports is so much a part of Grubby's life that he proposed to his wife, Cassandra Ng (a talented Warcraft 3 player herself), at the BlizzCon gaming convention in 2009. The notoriously kind, camera-ready couple have been lovingly called the "Posh and Becks of the esports world."

Grubby, an Orc player, built a Warcraft 3 rivalry with South Korean Jang Jae Hoe ("Moon") that remains one of the most hard-fought and popular battles in esports history. In the middle of the last decade, they were the undisputed top two players in the world. Any clash between the two became the main event of any tournament, almost without exception.

In 2006, Grubby and Moon met in the semifinals of the World eSports Games in China. Grubby upset Moon, ending Moon's incredible 28-game win-streak against Orc players. Esports journalist Rod Breslau has called the match one of the greatest moments in pro gaming history. When Grubby finally won the series, diehard Chinese fans rushed the stage.

Grubby's other major rivalry, with Chinese great Xiaofeng Li ("Sky"), was so compelling and closely watched that it inspired Beyond the Game, a feature-length documentary tracking the lives and games of the two giants.

Schenkhuizen had an incredible Warcraft career, but he's not the game's best all-time player. To fully appreciate Grubby's greatness and his position on this list, consider that he switched games to StarCraft 2 in 2011 and became one of Europe's most successful players. He quit one of the richest StarCraft 2 teams ever, built his own brand, and attracted numerous sponsors, all the while remaining one of the most popular and beloved gamers of all time.

At 30, he's considered positively old-school in esports, a wise, happy talent who still contends for titles today.

Highlights:

Grubby vs. Moon, WEG 2006, Warcraft 3
Grubby vs. Sky, WCG 2007, Warcraft 3
Grubby vs. Moon, WEM 2009, Warcraft 3
The Life of Grubby, 2011
Enjoyment of the Game, 2012 highlight video, StarCraft 2

Counter-Strike is an iconic game in esports history. It was the most important game in the West for a decade starting in 1999, and boasted more than its fair share of legends. Names such as Heaton, SpawN, elemeNt, and ksharp just scratch the surface of a list of enormous talents who helped change the public perception of pro gaming in America, Europe, and beyond.

Patrik Lindberg (f0rest), now 28, hails from Sweden, one of the most successful gaming nations of all time. F0rest's greatest accomplishment is likely his monstrous 2009 run on team Fnatic, in which his perfect play pushed the team to become the highest-earning in Counter-Strike history at a time when many observers worried the game was on its deathbed. For a period, Lindberg was perhaps the most celebrated esports figure outside of Asia.

Since breaking into high-level play in 2005, f0rest has always ranked among the most feared and respected players in his game. With over 50 gold medals to his name, no one blinked an eye when former teammate Patrik Sattermon (cArn) called f0rest the game's greatest player. Any survey of Counter-Strike players and fans finds countless agreement.

Like Grubby, f0rest has a big extra tack on his resume. Not only is he the greatest Counter-Strike player of all time, he's also moved on to the game's successor (C ounter-Strike: Global Offensive) where he has driven his team, Ninjas in Pyjamas, to become, for a time, what was considered the most dominant esports team of all time.

Lindberg's shyness and aversion to the media means that, at times, his star hasn't shone quite as brightly as other players of his caliber. You won't find his name on tabloid blogs, and you'll rarely see him involved in any drama whatsoever. He avoids the spotlight in favor of focusing on perfecting his game. That strategy seems to have worked out just fine so far.

Highlights:

fnatic.f0rest vs SK, IEM III Global Challenge Montreal Grand Final 2008, Counter-Strike 1.6
2009 f0rest highlight film, Counter-Strike 1.6
f0rest's 65-18 run vs fnatic, Copenhagen Games 2013, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Once upon a time, in a world long forgotten, Defense of the Ancients (Dota) was just a modification of Warcraft 3. It had a large and growing following, sure, but it hadn't ascended to the level of StarCraft, Warcraft, or any other major esport in 2005.

More than any other single player, the Russian Ivan Shinkarev (Vigoss) helped change that. Vigoss's competitive career began in 2005 with a number of local victories. In 2006, he made a global star turn with a team called Virtus Pro.

Virtus Pro emerged from nowhere with a hyperaggressive style that cast Vigoss in the lead role. His teammates referred to him as the mastermind behind their strategies, and fans called him "King of Gankers" for his exceptional speed and "powers of prediction," reported GosuGamers. Only Vigoss's teammate, ARS-ART, ever rivaled him for this title.

Vigoss was the best and most exciting player in the game when Dota exploded in China. He became the focus of hero worship in the country as the game spread through the most populous nation on earth. Vigoss inspired countless new players and fans to think of Dota as not just a distraction, but a deep discipline worth mastering. As Dota's player count overtook Warcraft 's and nearly became the most played video game worldwide, Vigoss was the face of the game.

Dota's eventual evolution into the two most popular games on the planet ( Dota 2 and League of Legends) owes an awful lot to its conquest of China. Although Vigoss can't take all the credit for China's adoption and love affair with Dota (you can thank the game's designers and the multiplayer arena Battle.net for that), he undoubtedly led the way.

Highlights:

7) Tomo Ohira

Hectic, loud and now barely remembered, California arcades in the 1990s were the delivery rooms where pro gaming was born. While Japan and the east coast had major scenes of their own, California produced some of the most fierce, visible and mythologized competition anywhere.

Tomo Ohira was its first king.

Ohira has been called "the first legend" of Street Fighter, the Mozart of the game, a player whose historic, tournament-winning streaks are still revered today. From 1991 to 1994, Ohira held dominion on-screen and off as the king of Street Fighter in America. He wasn't a pro gaming star in the way that we picture them today-with sponsorships, salaries, documentaries, and streams to thousands of viewers-but that's only because the technology had yet to be invented.

Tomo was one of the first competitors to practice his game like it was a full time job, to passionately and dutifully attend tournaments, and to build a reputation so great that he personally helped inspire what would become the first generation of global competitors.

The height of Tomo's mainstream stardom came thanks to GamePro, a discontinued video game magazine, popular in the '90s. They put Ohira's face in print and made him the star of a commercial and a strategy guide.

Ohira's unparalleled physical reactions, mental agility, and indefatigable dedication put him atop his game until he retired at the ripe old age of 17 to focus on chasing girls. Gaming held no possibility of a career-or even much money-at the time. There was no real choice to be made. College and real life were waiting.

Legendary Street Fighter players like Mike Watson and Jeff Schaefer have talked at length about how Tomo reigned over the first ever eSports scene in America.

"If Tomo played, he's going to win," said Schaefer. "The kid was way better than me, way better than anyone else. He was the best."

Was Tomo better than the person many consider to be the best Street Fighter player of all time, the man they call "the beast," Daigo Umehara?

"I've played Daigo," Schaefer, who famously beat Daigo with a perfect round, said. "Daigo is good. Daigo is no Tomo."

Highlights:

Tribute to Tomo Ohira, First King of Street Fighter, Part 1 and Part 2
Legend of Tomo Ohira, 2009
Tomo interviewed by Mike Watson at Evo, 2009

6) Flash

From 1998 to 2010, South Korean StarCraft was the most highly competitive gaming scene on the planet. StarCraft had the money and status to create and maintain a vibrant ecosystem for over a decade. Television broadcasts and net cafes wove the game into the fabric of South Korean life. While other games gingerly stepped into the spotlight, StarCraft hit the ground running and never stopped.

The most dominant, highest-earning StarCraft player of all time is Lee Young Ho (Flash), with over $400,000 in tournament wins and hundreds of thousands in contracts and endorsements. In the most widely watched, closely scrutinized, high pressure game on the planet, Flash reigned above all.

Flash owns an absurd 70 percent win rate against the world's top competition, holds the record for highest rating of all time, shares the record for longest tenure as the #1 ranked player in the world, and is tied for most Starleague wins in a single year, reports Liquipedia. For many modern esports fans, Flash embodies both genius and dominance.

Lee Young Ho once went by nicknames such as "Final Boss" and "The Ultimate Weapon," but as his list of accomplishments grew, fans started calling him something more simple and to-the-point: God.

Highlights:

Flash vs Jaedong, WCG Korea 2010
The Ultimate Weapon, 2009 highlights
Flash vs. Best, Proleague 2011

​5) Moon

Jang Jae-Ho (Moon) is the greatest Warcraft 3 player of all time.

While Grubby won events around the world, Moon won championships in South Korea, the Mecca of eSports. From near the beginning of Warcraft 3' s competitive scene, Moon consistently won against the best competition available anywhere. No one else could make that claim. He became a global icon in the process. In a game that gives players control over four possible races, Moon became known as the 5th Race.

Some Grubby and Sky fans may still challenge Moon's claim as the most skilled player of all time, but he is certainly the most important Warcraft player ever, bar none. On top of his competitive success, Moon belongs in the history books because of the record-breaking contract he received in 2009. He had been the best player in the world for nearly seven years, and was rewarded with a $500,000 contract with the Korean team WeMade FOX. This salary reflected his global success and status and, most of all, his immense popularity in Asia.

Moon's salary only makes sense in the context of a series of enormous investments into esports during 2008 and 2009. Newer, more mainstream titles such as Guitar Hero 2, Fight Night 3, Counter-Strike: Source and World of Warcraft were pushing their way into major esports competitions, often with help from the bank accounts of major media corporations. When mountains of money did not equal high viewership and attendance, sponsors soured on the esports industry as a whole.

Entire teams and leagues collapsed. Warcraft 3 suffered a particularly gruesome fate thanks to the artificial inflation of player salaries, of which Moon's was the highest by far. His salary and, moreover, the environment in which it grew, helped destroy much of the old world of esports and create the landscape in which pro gaming exists today.

However, while misguided investments led to the downfall of Warcraft 3's competitive scene, Moon himself carried on for several years by winning several major tournaments to shore up his title as Warcraft 's best of all time.

Highlights:

Moon vs. Grubby, MBCGame WarCraft 3 World War 2007
Moon vs. Sky, IEF final 2008

4) Daigo

Tomo Ohira became the first king of Street Fighter by dominating the game during the birth of esports in California, but the biggest unanswered question of Tomo's career has always concerned the player widely considered to be Street Fighter's all-time greatest: Could Tomo beat Daigo?

Japan's Daigo Umehara was one of esports' first global stars. His 1998 trip to America to defeat Alex Valle in Street Fighter Alpha 3 marked the beginning of a storied international rivalry that would define the most important fighting game franchise ever.

Known as The Beast, Umehara's arcade obsession began in 1991 and continued through his teenage years as he began to pile up the wins. Daigo became Japan's Street Fighter national champion in 1997.

At this point, the Japanese and American fighting game scenes rarely interacted. As when Tomo Ohira reigned only a few years earlier, each scene was something of a question mark to the other. Major international tournaments had not been firmly established, and competition between the two continents was extremely limited.

The 1998 world championship marked the beginning of a globally competitive era that had big implications beyond Street Fighter. Umehara's victory in what was then the most highly anticipated match in fighting game history kicked off a long career of dominance.

Daigo has competed at the highest levels in over a dozen games, from Vampire Hunter to Street Fighter 5. He moved from merely the greatest Street Fighter player in the world and catalyst for global esports competitions to a genuine international celebrity when a he won 2004 match against Justin Wong in thrilling style.

Maybe you've seen the video: With Daigo down to his last hit points, Wong is ready to win. But through a surreal series of blocks, Daigo claims victory from the jaws of defeat. Capcom's Seth Killian told Rod Breslau that the video of Daigo's comeback has been viewed well over 20 million times.

The American publication GamePro has compared the 2004 Daigo/Wong moment to Willie Mays' famous over-the-shoulder catch in the 1954 World Series, a spectacular act that has come to define not just a game, but an entire era in the sport.

The preceding accomplishments alone would likely be enough to land Daigo on this list, but there's so much more. He has continued his high level of play for more than 15 years, winning world championships as recently as his famed repeat performance at Evo 2009 and 2010. He's got two Topanga A League titles and two Topanga World League titles and placed second at Capcom Cup 2015 (then donated his $60k prize to a scholarship fund).

Very few players can match Daigo's résumé, and there is simply no one else with the inhuman longevity that The Beast possesses.

Highlights:

Daigo vs Justin Wong, Evo 2009 Finals, Street Fighter 4
Daigo vs Ricky Ortiz, Evo 2010 Finals, Street Fighter 4
Daigo vs Alex Valle, 1998 Capcom World Championships, Street Fighter Alpha 3

3) Fatal1ty

Jonathan Wendel (Fatal1ty) is the most important player that the United States has ever produced. In terms of prize money, he's the single highest earner in esports history. America's first true celebrity gamer, the height of his fame in the early 2000s remains beyond the reach of any American to this day.

Wendel's competitive career began in 1999 with a $500 tournament win in Quake 3. The next few months saw him take home $4,000 in Dallas and then $15,000 in Sweden, where an 18-game winning streak made him the best-known Quake star at the time.

Behind the passion and pleasure of play, Fatal1ty always saw gaming as a job. He practiced longer and smarter than any of his rivals, and the results bore that out as he won tournament after tournament-including five total world championships in 1999, 2000 (in which he won two), 2001 and 2005. Wendel actively sought out and secured major sponsorship deals for himself and built the Fatal1ty brand to heights that no eSports individual, team, or league had reached before.

Wendel appeared in the New York Times, Forbes, 60 Minutes, Time and, most memorably, MTV's True Life series, which followed his first place Unreal Tournament 2003 run at Winter CPL 2002 as part of an hour-long episode on gamers.

Wendel was a catalyst for the first wave of truly professional eSports in the West. As games like Quake and Counter-Strike and leagues such as CPL conquered Europe and America in the 2000s, even your parents might have recognized Fatal1ty's face.
Highlights:
Fatal1ty vs makaveli, CPL 2000 Finals, Quake 3 Arena
Fatal1ty vs Vo0, CPL 2005 Finals, Painkiller
Fatal1ty vs PC Gamer staff, 2007

​2) Boxer
1) Faker Illustration by Max Fleishman

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The 10 greatest players in esports history

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Ever since gamers could first go head-to-head in video games like 1962's Spacewar and 1972's Pong, gaming has been the stage for an endless competition. That competition began to attract attention-and money-in the United States during the 1980s. Across the globe, electronic contests grew in size and spectacle in the '90s, and then exploded in the new millennium.

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The Greatest Gaming Tournaments in the World

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The Greatest Gaming Tournaments in the World

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Posted by: Joseph Mitchell
5/12
CRAAP-46

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Check out the 10 must-attend video game tournaments in the world.

Games get a bad reputation as being lonely affairs, but we know different. They can engender amazing amounts of community and togetherness. And they can also inspire some of the most heated competition the world has ever seen.

"E-sports" is the term that has been coined to describe this new world of competitive gaming, and the stakes are high. Some tournaments have prize payouts into the six figures, and major stadiums get packed to the rafters with people watching the action.

If you want to get involved in the tournament scene, the following list will help you get started. It runs down the biggest events around the globe and what competitors do to get the right to play there. Some are open to everyone, while others are the finish line for brackets that run for months beforehand.

Whatever the setup, going to one of these tournaments can be a life-changing experience. Where else can you bond in person with people who, before, were just names on a screen? If you want to compete yourself, it's an awesome way to test your skills against the best in the world. And if you just like to watch, there are plenty of hype moments there, too. Here's our rundown of the 10 must-attend video game tournaments in the world.

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The Greatest Gaming Tournaments in the World

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Check out the 10 must-attend video game tournaments in the world. Games get a bad reputation as being lonely affairs, but we know different. They can engender amazing amounts of community and togetherness. And they can also inspire some of the most heated competition the world has ever seen.

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A List Of 1139 Five Nights At Freddy’s Fan Games

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A List Of 1139 Five Nights At Freddy’s Fan Games

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Posted By: Joseph Mitchell
5/12
CRAAP-46

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A List Of 1139 Five Nights At Freddy's Fan Games

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Update, September 14th: Shortly after this post, Five Nights fan games really took off. At one point, I had hoped to compile a new list of the 2362 games on Game Jolt, but, well, there were 2362 of them. I certainly did start, though, so now I've boshed another 922 games onto this list.

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Craap- 48
Toreona Walls

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As spring approaches, so does the Expressing Feelings Through Art (EFTA) exhibit. High school students from 25-30 schools in Los Angeles County submit art every year. The scholarship and exhibition program promotes dealing with emotions through artistic expression. Each student who participates creates a piece of art they paint, draw or photograph, that best expresses a strong feeling. He or she also submits a short written statement about the work, describing the story and emotion behind it.

A team of judges from all over Los Angeles representing visual arts, literary arts and the mental health field, sift through all the art submitted, awarding a first, second, third, and fourth place awards, with eight honorable mentions. Prize money is given to students with a matching amount going to their art teachers at the culminating ceremony.

Light Bringer Project works in partnership on EFTA with Mental Health America of Los Angeles. MHALA is dedicated to promoting mental health recovery and wellness.

The EFTA exhibition and awards ceremony will be held at Art Center College of Design's south campus (950 S. Raymond Ave. Pasadena, CA 91105) on Sunday, May 12th. The event is free of charge. It will be attended by art teachers, parents, siblings, friends and family. The exhibit remains on view to Art Center students, faculty and the general public for a full week.

"At the reception," says Cecelia Ybarra, Art Center's Outreach Program Manager, "we present one student to receive a free course in our Saturday High program for 9th- 12th graders (value: $275 - $350). What I like about EFTA is that it helps young people identify their feelings. Emotions can be overwhelming, especially for high school students. EFTA gives youth the space to consider how they feel and convey that passion through words and images. Going through that process in EFTA helps them get ready for more rigorous creative output, and we appreciate the chance to further their creative education in Saturday High."

Light Bringer Project would like to thank all the teachers and students, along with Art Center and MHALA for participating year after year. EFTA is partially funded through a grant from the W.M. Keck Foun dation.

[caption id="attachment_1132" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Art Center's Cecelia Ybarra stands with EFTA student.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1141" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Tom Coston of Light Bringer Project addresses the crowd at the EFTA 2012 reception.[/caption]

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As spring approaches, so does the Expressing Feelings Through Art (EFTA) exhibit. High school students from 25-30 schools in Los Angeles County submit art every year. The scholarship and exhibition program promotes dealing with emotions through artistic expression. Each student who participates creates a piece of art they paint, draw or photograph, that best expresses a strong feeling.

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New NEA Research Report Shows Potential Benefits of Arts Education for At-Risk Youth

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New NEA Research Report Shows Potential Benefits of Arts Education for At-Risk Youth

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Toreona Walls
CRAAP- 47

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Washington, DC -- At-risk students who have access to the arts in or out of school also tend to have better academic results, better workforce opportunities, and more civic engagement, according to a new NEA report, The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies. The study reports these and other positive outcomes associated with high levels of arts exposure for youth of low socioeconomic status.

The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth study uses four separate longitudinal studies (three from the U.S. Department of Education) to track children, teenagers, and young adults who had high or low levels of arts engagement in or out of school. Those activities included coursework in music, dance, theater, or the visual arts; out-of-school arts lessons; or membership, participation, and leadership in arts organizations and activities, such as band or theater.

The study focuses on the potential effects of arts engagement on youth from the lowest quarter of socioeconomic status. Although most of the arts-related benefits in this report applied only to these at-risk youth, some findings also suggest benefits for youth from advantaged backgrounds.

"Arts education doesn't take place in isolation," said NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. "It has to take place as part of an overall school and education reform strategy. This report shows that arts education has strong links with other positive educational outcomes."

Among the key findings:

Better academic outcomes -- Teenagers and young adults of low socioeconomic (SES) status who have a history of in-depth arts involvement ("high arts") show better academic outcomes than low-SES youth with less arts involvement ("low arts"). They earn better grades and have higher rates of college enrollment and attainment.

Low-SES students who had arts-rich experiences in high school were ten percent more likely to complete a high school calculus course than low-SES students with low arts exposure (33 percent versus 23 percent).

High-arts, low-SES students in the eighth grade were more likely to have planned to earn a bachelor's degree (74 percent) than were all students (71 percent) or low-arts, low-SES students (43 percent).

High-arts, low-SES students were 15 percent more likely to enroll in a highly or moderately selective four-year college than low-arts, low-SES students (41 percent versus 26 percent).

Students with access to the arts in high school were three times more likely than students who lacked those experiences to earn a bachelor's degree (17 percent versus five percent).

When it comes to participating in extracurricular activities in high school, high-arts, low-SES students are much more likely also to take part in intramural and interscholastic sports, as well as academic honor societies, and school yearbook or newspaper -- often at nearly twice or three times the rate of low-arts, low-SES students.

Higher career goals -- There is a marked difference between the career aspirations of young adults with and without arts backgrounds.

High-arts, low-SES college students had the highest rates of choosing a major that aligns with a professional career, such as accounting, education, nursing, or social sciences (30 percent), compared to low-arts, low-SES students (14 percent) and the overall SES sample (22 percent).

Half of all low-SES adults with arts-rich backgrounds expected to work in a professional career (such as law, medicine, education, or management), compared to only 21 percent of low-arts, low-SES young adults.

More civically engaged - Young adults who had intensive arts experiences in high school are more likely to show civic-minded behavior than young adults who did not, with comparatively high levels of volunteering, voting, and engagement with local or school politics. In many cases, this difference appears in both low-and high-SES groups.

High-arts, low-SES eighth graders were more likely to read a newspaper at least once a week (73 percent) compared to low-arts, low-SES students (44 percent) and the overall SES sample (66 percent).

High-arts, low-SES young adults reported higher volunteer rates (47 percent) than the overall sample and low-arts, low-SES young adults (43 and 26 percent respectively).

High-arts, low-SES young adults voted in the 2004 national election at a rate of 45 percent, compared to 31 percent of low-arts, low-SES young adults.

The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studieswas prepared for the National Endowment for the Arts by James S. Catterall, University of California Los Angeles, with Susan A. Dumais, Louisiana State University, and Gillian Hampden-Thompson, University of York, U.K. The report is one of the NEA's latest efforts to conduct and commission research that examines evidence of the value and impact of the arts in other domains of American life, such as education, health and well-being, community liveability, and economic prosperity. The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth is available at arts.gov.
About the National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the NEA has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector. To join the discussion on how art works, visit the NEA at www.arts.gov.

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New NEA Research Report Shows Potential Benefits of Arts Education for At-Risk Youth

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Washington, DC -- At-risk students who have access to the arts in or out of school also tend to have better academic results, better workforce opportunities, and more civic engagement, according to a new NEA report, The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies.

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155M Americans play video games, and 80% of households own a gaming device.

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155M Americans play video games, and 80% of households own a gaming device.

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Posted By: Joseph Mitchell
5/11
CRAAP-

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8 Ways Video Games Are Bad For Your Health

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8 Ways Video Games Are Bad For Your Health

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Posted By: Joseph Mitchell
5/11
CRAAP Score- 45

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8 Ways Video Games Are Bad For Your Health | HealthCentral

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Though the activity level needed to play Wii or Xbox Kinect are a step in the right direction, a majority of video games still involve sitting in front of a scr

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Posted By: Ms. Culbertson
5/11
CRAAP Score -- 45

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On July 16, the Senate passed the "Every Child Achieves Act (S.1177), its version of legislation to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA is the federal education law that funds primary and secondary education. The law aims to provide all students with fair and equal opportunities to achieve a high quality education. It was last reauthorized in 2002 as "No Child Left Behind."

The Senate's bill contains several "wins" for arts education. It encourages partnerships between schools and nonprofits for educational programming, it authorizes federal funds for spending on programs that may include the arts, and it acknowledges the importance of the arts by defining it as a core academic subject. Here are a few of those wins:

It creates a new Literacy and Arts Education program.

PAA advocated for the retention of the Department of Education's Arts in Education program as a distinct grant competition. The final bill includes a section titled "Literacy and Arts Education," (Title 5, Part H Sec. 5801). It allows the Secretary of Education to "award grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements, on a competitive basis, to eligible entities for the purposes of:

promoting arts education for disadvantaged students and students who are children with disabilities, through activities such as

professional development for arts educators, teachers, and principals;

development and dissemination of instructional materials and arts-based educational programming, including online resources, in multiple arts disciplines;

and community and national outreach activities that strengthen and expand partnerships among schools, local educational agencies, communities, or national centers for the arts."

The definition of "core academic subjects" is retained, and it includes the arts.

The final bill defines "core academic subjects" as "English, reading or language arts, writing, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, geography, computer science, music, and physical education," (Title 9, Part A, Section 9101). This makes arts education eligible for federal funding and gives the arts consideration in other programs authorized in the legislation. For example:

Targeted Assistance School Programs that aid students at risk of not meeting State academic standards can use Title 1 funds for "programs, activities, and courses in core academic subjects" to help students achieve (Title 1, Part A, Section 1113).

K-12 literacy programs must "integrate comprehensive literacy instruction into core academic subjects." For grades 6-12, funds must be used to assess the quality of this integrated instruction (Title 2, Part D, Section 2404).

The 21st Century Community Learning Centers program is restored.

The final Senate Bill restores and authorizes the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program which offers students "a broad array of additional services, programs, and activities" including the arts "that are designed to reinforce and complement the regular academic program of participating students," (Title 4, Part B, Sec. 4201).
In January, when Sen. Alexander released his discussion draft of the bill-then called the "Every Child Ready for College or Career Act of 2015"-none of these three provisions were included. You spoke up for arts education and took action by responding to Sen. Alexander's discussion draft in January and contacting the Senate HELP Committee later in the spring. Scores of letters were sent to the Senate expressing the importance of the arts in a complete education; your advocacy efforts made a difference in seeing these provisions included in the final bill.
Schools are encouraged to partner with nonprofits and community organizations.

The bill permits local educational agencies receiving state funds to partner with other schools, community-based services and programs, and nonprofit organizations to develop "programs and activities that offer a variety of well-rounded educational experience[s] for students, such as those that use music and the arts as tools to promote constructive student engagement, problem solving, and conflict resolution," (Title 4, Part A, Section 4105).

Next, House and Senate leaders will meet to discuss each Chamber's version of ESEA reauthorization to develop a bill to present to the President to sign into law. We will keep you updated on the status of the legislation while it is in conference.

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On July 16, the Senate passed the "Every Child Achieves Act (S.1177), its version of legislation to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA is the federal education law that funds primary and secondary education. The law aims to provide all students with fair and equal opportunities to achieve a high quality education.

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TImothy Brown
CRAAP-50

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"Hi honeys, I'm home!"

You skip into your house after a brutal day at the office, greeting your offspring with a generous smile.

"I'm so happy to see everybody!"

Silence. No one looks at you. Everyone is hunched over, hypnotized by a gizmo.

Teen daughter Tabitha is texting furiously. Tommy, your tween, is blasting video game bad guys. Five-year-old Theresa stares rapturously at an episode of Annoying Orange, a YouTube video on the gleaming screen.

"I've lost my kids! They're brainwashed by mind-gobbling gadgets!"

You sit down. Take a deep breath. To relax, you scroll through Facebook and catch up on your email. Meekly, you join the other mesmerized zombies...

All wired now

We're all wired now, incessantly interacting with our digital doodads. You don't worry about your own habits because you're a grown-up, but you do fret, enormously, about the possibility of your kids contracting wicked side effects. When you were a youngster today's devices were barely imagined. Today, kids spend seven hours a day, on average, on some sort of electronic device, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, and 97 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 play digital games.

Are kids' brains in danger? Or not? If tech toys are mentally malevolent, why are our kids so happy? But if we take the e-companions away, our kids go crazy... like addicts!

To determine the neurological impact on our little ones' minds, we took a close look at the research, and what it says about the e-things your kids are obsessed with, to determine the effect on their developing brains.

Violent, vacuous - or vindicated?

Video games come in many beguiling forms, but only a few subgenres have been examined closely in terms of their effects on the brain.

Dr. Daphne Bavelier, brain scientist at the University of Rochester and the University of Geneva, has prolifically researched homicidal "first person shooter" (FPS) games such as Call of Duty. Her research found that gamers' brains show activity in multiple brain regions, indicating numerous - and surprising - visual-spatial benefits in areas like perception, attention, task switching, mental rotation, brain plasticity, learning, short-term memory, crowding acuity, contrast sensitivity, and perceptual decision processes.

Bavelier isn't an outlier, either: Italian, Polish, and Dutch researchers agree with her findings. In a 2013 study, for example, researchers found that FPS game participants showed a more flexible mindset and faster reaction time than non-gamers.

But wait: are these types of visual-spatial skills useful to anyone other than future assassins? Yes. Many bloodless vocations - including engineering, mathematics, natural sciences, economic forecasting, architecture, art, and design - require the eye-hand intelligence that video games develop.

Medical surgery (gut-soaked, but ethically so), for example, requires visual-spatial adeptness. Andrew Wright, associate professor of surgery at University of Washington, is a surgeon and self-proclaimed "gaming geek" who steadies his nerves and fingers by playing Assassin's Creed. According to Wright, "Gamers have a higher level of executive function. They have the ability to process information and make... split-second decisions." Comparing FPS games to tense operating rooms, Wright notes that both have a "sense of life and death and urgency."

In fact, many daily modern chores - like reading maps, driving in heavy traffic, packing objects, and orienting yourself in a new environment, such as a school or office building - demand visual-spatial intelligence.

Girls and games

Two visual-spatial skills - attention and mental rotation ability - are more developed in males than females. This provides boys, many researchers believe, with an edge in mathematics and engineering. Want your girl to catch up? A surprising study from University of Toronto suggests that "only 10 hours of training with an action video game" decreased or eliminated the female disadvantage.

Does gruesome mayhem make kids violent?

Opinions vary widely on this question. Organizations including Mothers Against Video Game Addiction and Violence and Parents Against Violence have mobilized to combat video game carnage. Both groups argue there's a link between school shootings - such as those that occurred at Columbine and Sandy Hook - and violent video games.

Psychologist Craig A. Anderson, a vocal video game critic, conducted a 2010 study that shows a link between exposure to violent video games and increased aggressive behavior, as well as decreased empathy among gamers. Barbara J. Wilson of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne concluded in a 2008 study that exposure to violent video games, like exposure to violent television, can contribute to aggressive behavior. And research led by Dr. Jordan Grafman of the National Institute of Health and published in the Oxford Journal suggests that boys exposed to violent video games were desensitized because emotional responses are blunted. According to Grafman, his research indicates that, "continued exposure to violent videos will make an adolescent less sensitive to violence, more accepting of violence, and more likely to commit aggressive acts." Even more disturbing is a 2014 report that found that youths who had played violent video games in the past year were four times more likely to also report they'd carried a weapon to school.

But researchers disagree. Psychologist Christopher J. Ferguson of Stetson University believes data in studies linking video games and violence have been improperly analyzed. He contends that this research ignores important social factors - such as mental health status and family environment - that can trigger violence, while pinning all the blame on gaming. His prolific research supports his conclusion that factors like depression, antisocial personality traits, exposure to violence in the family, and the influence of peers are far more likely to trigger aggressive behavior than gaming.

What's the damage?

Will video games ruin vision, destroy attention spans, and eviscerate impulse control?
In fact, the opposite is true, according to brain scientist Bavelier. She cites abundant evidence that tech toys train brains to see better. Video games also don't lead to distractability, she asserts; au contraire, they can improve attention. The 2013 Italian, Polish, and Dutch study also observed that gamers' impulse control was undamaged by the hobby.

Less bloody alternatives

If you don't like violent video games, or if you have younger kids for whom such games are not appropriate, there are other options. Try steering your children toward "real-time strategy" (RTS) games, such as Civilization, Risk, Age of Empires, and StarCraft.

Take caution: warfare lurks in this genre too. But it's far more subtle - with more emphasis on other, less lethal activities - including exploration, managing an economy, and building construction. Meanwhile, you get the gift every parent wants for his or her child: cognitive gain. A 2013 study at Brock University in Canada found that students who played strategic video games reported that gaming increased their problem-solving skills and that these enhanced skills led, in turn, to better grades. A 2013 South Korea study that conducted brain scans on the nation's professional Starcraft gamers found enhanced cortical thickness in three brain regions and concluded "long-term playing of online games is associated with... cognitive flexibility." (Tip: Starcraft II's three-dimensionality boosts four brain regions that are not enhanced playing two-dimensional Starcraft I).

Two additional strategic videos recommended by psychologist Christopher Ferguson include LEGO video games (for age 6 and up) and Europa Universalis, which Ferguson admires for its " real high cognitive load."

If you want 100 percent peaceful play, try Tetris, the block-fitting puzzle game that packs skulls with smarts instead of bullets. Japanese researchers reported that Tetris, practiced 15 minutes a day, five days a week for four weeks, led to improved attention and visual-spatial ability.

A third genre that may enhance intelligence are the open world games such as Minecraft, the Swedish sensation that has sold 35 million copies. Minecraft.edu helps teachers use the complex, captivating game to teach subjects like physics, geography, and languages.

Is gaming addictive?

This is a concern for many parents. "Anything that stimulates pleasure can be addictive to a very small segment of the population," according to Ferguson. "Some individuals have difficulty regulating their reward centers and balancing short-term rewards with consequences." Ferguson argues that pathological gaming infects 3.1 percent of the population, less than alcohol abuse among kids ages 12 to 17 and far less than kids over 18. "Parents should be concerned about that."

Also in this series:

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Effects of video games on a child's brain

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"Hi honeys, I'm home!" You skip into your house after a brutal day at the office, greeting your offspring with a generous smile. "I'm so happy to see everybody!" Silence. No one looks at you. Everyone is hunched over, hypnotized by a gizmo. Teen daughter Tabitha is texting furiously.

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Timothy Brown
CRAAP-46

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Danielle Dai and Amanda Fry
Little bit o' history
If you are a parent in this era of information and technology, chances are you have a child who has played, is playing, or will be playing video games. The video game industry is a rapid-growing market that went from having a market volume of $100 million in 1985 to $4 billion in 1990 (Gartner, 2013). How did this industry gain so much ground? Where did it start? Prior to the 1980's, there were what we may consider rudimentary computer games, commercially sold coin-operated games, and home consoles. Shortly after the North-American Video Game Crash of 1983 -a massive recession that hit the industry- the Nintendo Entertainment System induced a resurgence in popularity that has only continued to grow (Cesarone, 2014). In the years since, the gaming world has expanded and subdivided into numerous categories. There are casual, serious and educational games in mediums ranging from console games to online RPG's (role playing games) to the most recent and flourishing market of mobile games. In 2013, the worldwide market volume totaled $93 billion (Metrics 2.0, 2007).
So what does this mean for our kids today?
In America, 81% of youths play at least once a month, 8.5% of them are addicted and "the average 8- to 12 year-old now plays 13 hours of video games per week, while the average 13- to 18 year old plays 14 hours of video games per week" (Metrics 2.0, 2 007). Because video games are so prominent in children's lives, it is difficult to prevent them from playing video games entirely- but is that even necessary? With such a variety of game types out there, it is difficult to say if video games in general are good or bad. Luckily, there have been countless studies do ne on this and information on the pros and cons can be easily found.
Negatives of Video Games
There are various types of video games available in today's industry. Video games are intended to target different aspects of a child's life. These video games are comprised of a variety of educational, serious, and casual games, but in reality, what child is going to choose a game about learning versus a game where they can kill zombies or drive cars at unruly amounts of speed? A study from Buchman and Funk found that "violent games became consistently popular across grades for both boys and girls" (Cesarone, 1998). Educational games were more popular for some of the girls being asked, but throughout all the age groups, violent video games never lost their superior power in the gaming industry.

Studies have shown the negative effects violent video games have on the younger generation. Calvert and Tan did a study on young adults, where they compared the differences between playing versus observing violent video games. Studies found that "students who had played a violent virtual reality game had a higher heart rate, reported more dizziness and nausea, and exhibited more aggressive thoughts in a posttest than those who had played a nonviolent game" (Cesarone, 1998). Although these studies do not directly determine if aggression increases in their experimenters, they are able to observe behavioral changes that include more aggressive patterns.

Another negative aspect of video games is the fact that kids are spending too much time playing the games rather than physically playing outside. From the quote above, it is evident that kids involved with video games are spending 13 and 14 hours a week playing them rather than just an hour here and there. By spending so much time on their game console or on the computer, children are missing out on their social life. Children are less likely to go out and compete in extracurricular activities which inhibit them from meeting new people and making friends. Funk and Buchman did another study on the effects video games have on kids, but in this one, they were testing for self-competence. Results found that "for boys, but not for girls, a stronger preference for each of the three types of violent games was associated with lower self-competence scores in one or more developmentally important areas, including academic, interpersonal, and behavioral skills" (Cesarone, 1998). This finding factors into the idea of taking time away from doing other things for these boys because they are suffering in important factors in life that will allow them to succeed.

Lastly, let's take a look at the obvious reason why video games are not beneficial to a child's development, obesity. According to the CDC, in 2009-2010, 12.1 percent of children ages 2 to 5 are obese, 18 percent of 6 to 11 year olds are obese, and 18.4 percent of 12 to 19 year olds are obese. Now, this is only the percentages of obesity, and does not account for the amount of children who are overweight as well. What is causing this to occur? I can tell you, the amount of time children are now spending playing video games is a factor in that. By spending much of their free time on the computer or on their game console, kids are not going out and participating in activities that will keep them physically fit in healthy. Kids get the lazy mindset and would rather not go play outside.
Benefits of Playing Video Games
Research has shown that playing video games can be beneficial for a number of cognitive functions and may also contain social benefits. The first and foremost thing one discovers in a game is that following directions is of the utmost importance. In order to progress in games, one must first learn to follow the guidelines, restrictions and components of them. As the player confronts new challenges, he must use problem-solving to find solutions. This is true for educational games, mind games, and RPGs alike. The player cannot get through with what they already have or know and must find new combinations and incorporate old skills with new skills to overcome obstacles such as the level or quest (Gee, 2003). In relation to this, the player can also learn strategy and anticipation, management of resources (simulation games), mapping, pattern recognition, how to judge the situation and practice reading (with directions, dialogue, etc.) and quantitative calculations (through educational games, managing finances, buying and selling for profit, etc. (Tumbokon, 2014).

Gamers also get used to multitasking. As games become more intricate, players must juggle different objectives while keeping track of all the changing elements and connecting ideas. Games also induce quick thinking. According to cognitive scientist Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester, results of a study found that people who play video games become more attuned to their environment and able to keep visual tabs on friends in crowds, able to navigate better and better at everyday things like driving and reading small print. Playing games also "significantly reduced reaction times without sacrificing accuracy" beyond the context of the games ( Bavelier et al., 2009) and into making correct real-world decisions. Because of this effect on perceptual reaction times, even the U.S. military uses warfare simulation games in training and claims its benefits (Vargas, 2006).

Video games also increase hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills and spatial reasoning (Tumbokon, 2014). For example, in shooter games, the player keeps track of their position, direction, speed, aim, results and more. The brain processes all this information and then coordinates with the hands since all actions are done through the controller or keyboard. These skills can be applied to real world situations like surgical procedure (Florida Hospital, 2013).

Finally, gaming is stimulating, a learning experience and a social activity. The reason why people find it so enjoyable is that games are usually the right degree of challenging and the player takes an active role (unlike watching television) so there is an incentive to achieve (Gee, 2003). Let's also not forget that many games, like "Rise of Nations" or "Age of Mythology" are educational and have a lot to offer in areas like science, politics, history and cultural studies and some games are practical, like pilot-training simulations. The gaming world is very popular. Thus, playing video games has become a social activity. In fact, nearly 60% of frequent gamers play with friends, 33% with siblings and 25% with a spouse or parents. Many games require cooperative play and logistics, comradeship and frequent interactions between team members.
Wrap-up
Like so many other issues these days, the concept of video games is controversial. The line between a healthy amount of gaming and an excessive amount is easily blurred and crossed- especially when video games are as addicting as studies claim. As parents, it is prudent to find moderation in all things. Banning games entirely may be good for some households, but others (depending on the prominence of gaming within the environment) will find that it may socially isolate their children, take away a source of joy and possibly cognitive development. However, opening the door to the good, will also allow access to the bad including exposing the children's minds to the realm of violence, taking their free time away from doing other things, and putting them at risk for obesity. In the end, it is important that the parent monitors what kinds of games children are playing and being exposed to. Part of this job is to know the descriptors and the genres they represent. The Entertainment Software Rating Board has ratings that provide concerned parents information about the content of the games (ESRB, 2014). Efficient use of these ratings can help parents to make more informed choices for their children.
References:
Cesarone, Bernard. "Video Games and Children - Child & Adolescent Development: Overview." Gracepoint. Gracepoint. Web. 16 Apr. 2014. http://www.gracepointwellness.org/28-child-adolescent-development-overview/article/1949-video-games-and-children

Cesarone, Bernard. "Video Games: Research, Ratings, Recommendations. ERIC Digest." ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education Champaign, IL. November 1998. Web. 16 Apr. 2014.

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED424038.pdf

"Gartner Says Worldwide Video Game Market to Total $93 Billion in 2013." Gartner Says Worldwide Video Game Market to Total $93 Billion in 2013. Gartner, 29 Oct. 2013. Web. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2614915

"Video Game Addiction: 81% of American Youth Play; 8.5% Are Addicted." Metrics 2.0: Business and Market Intelligence. Metrics 2.0, Jan. 2007. http://www.metrics2.com/blog/2007/04/04/video_game_addiction_81_of_american_youth_play_85.html

JAMES PAUL GEE. "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy." ACM Computers in Entertainment. Vol. 1, No. 1, October 2003. http://studentweb.niu.edu/3/~Z1629863/tportfolio/games.pdf

Tumbokon, Chacha. "The Positive and Negative Effects of Video Games." Raise Smart Kid. Web. 16 Apr. 2014. http://www.raisesmartkid.com/3-to-6-years-old/4-articles/34-the-good-and-bad-effects-of-video-games

Matthew W.G. Dye, C. Shawn Green, and Daphne Bavelier. "Increasing Speed of Processing With Action Video Games." A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Vol. 18 No. 6 (2009) : 321-326. http://psych.wisc.edu/CSGreen/dye_CDiPS09.pdf

Vargas,Jose Antonio. "Virtual Reality Prepares Soldiers for Real War." Washington Post 14 February, 2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/13/AR2006021302437.html

"Video Games Help Doctors Improve Surgical Skills." Florida Hospital. Florida Hospital, 9 Oct. 2013. https://www.floridahospital.com/news/video-games-help-doctors-improve-surgical-skills

"ESRB Ratings Guide." Rating Categories, Content Descriptors, and Interactive Elements from ESRB. Entertainment Software Rating Board. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

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Effect of Video Games on Child Development

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Danielle Dai and Amanda Fry Little bit o' history If you are a parent in this era of information and technology, chances are you have a child who has played, is playing, or will be playing video games.

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Timothy Brown
CRAAP-45
4/21

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Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence? - Violent Video Games - ProCon.org

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Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence? Read pros, cons, and expert responses in the debate.

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Timothy Brown
CRAAP-50
4/27

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I believe that video games will prove to be one of the most important mediums of art that humanity has ever had at its disposal.

Technology has expanded the canvas upon which artists are able to paint and tell their stories. As an art form that has only existed in the digital space, video games are truly a collision of art and science. They include many forms of traditional artistic expression-sculpture in the form of 3D modeling, illustration, narrative arcs, and dynamic music-that combine to create something that transcends any one type.

Video games are also the only form of media that allows for personalizing the artistic experience while still retaining the authority of the artist. In video games we find three distinct voices: the creator, the game, and the player. Those who play a game are following the story of the author and are bound by the constructs of the rules-but based on the choices they make, the experience can be completely personal. If you can observe the work of another and find in it personal connection, then art has been achieved.

Our kids are growing up in a world where they're finding equally meaningful connection on both sides of the digital line. Video games are a natural evolution of what we've always done, play-to discover our world, discover each other, and discover ourselves.
Melissinos is director of corporate strategy for media and entertainment at Verizon and curated "The Art of Video Games" exhibit at the Smithsonian.

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Video Games Are the Most Important Art Form in History

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They're the only medium that allows for personalizing the artistic experience

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Timothy Brown
CRAAP-45
4/27

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As I sit in my dorm, beating my roommate badly in NHL 2015, I start to think about doing homework. The natural reaction to that thought is homework can wait because this is a must-win game for bragging rights. Then I start to think: do video games affect your brain? Or is it just something that side tracks you, so you do not do your homework. The common answer from most people would be video games are not good for you. Still, some say video games have a positive impact on the individual playing,

When we look for positives, there is no shortage. According to a study, video games provide emotional, cognitive, motivational, and social benefits. "Several studies have shown a causal relation between playing preferred video games and improved mood or increases in positive emotion" (American Psychologist). When I see this, it is hard to disagree with. What is better than beating a friend in an intense FIFA game? The answer to that: Absolutely nothing. Even if it is just a puzzle game, such as angry birds, winning is winning, and this improves the mood of the player.

One of these studies concluded that playing video games causes changes in brain waves consistent with improved moods. Obviously, how much mood improves varies depending on the game. This study appears very well done. It performs a very complex evaluation of each participant, which lead to the conclusion, using formulas and statistics. Assuming there were no confounding variables, it appears safe to say that there is a causal relationship between playing video games and an individual's mood.

The cognitive benefits of video games is clearly present. Video games can not be good for your brain. This statement is false. Video games, especially shooting video games, promote a wide range of cognitive skills. "A recently published meta-analysis (Uttal et al., 2013) concluded that the spatial skills improvements derived from playing commercially available shooter video games are comparable to the effects of formal (high school and university-level) courses aimed at enhancing these same skills" ( American Psychologist). I find this conclusion to be amazing, but also not an outrageous assumption. If you think about it, video games, especially shooting games, force the player to make hundreds of split-second decisions in just one game.

The most interesting positive benefit of video games in my eyes is the social aspect. When I think of video games, social skills is the last thing I would think about. In fact, I would assume that people who play video games too much do not have said social skills. With many games, such as World of Warcraft, Farmville, and even games such as FIFA or Madden, playing with a friend is necessary or simply more fun. Based on the statistics, 62% of gamers play games with others, whether that is online or in person. The research done by the ESA seems very well-done, which makes this statistic fairly reliable. I would definitely agree with this statistic because, from experience, video games are more fun when you play with or against someone. It is not nearly as fun to compete against the computer, when you could be playing, and talking to, another human being.

When one thinks about the effect of video games, it normally results in the negative connotation. These statistics and studies clearly show the opposite. Gaming provides benefits that are not clearly visible when one thinks about video games. Especially within recent years, smartphone games have greatly increased the number of individuals who play video games. It is the common notion that video games, and technology as a whole, are ruining our generation, but I would beg to differ and the evidence supports such a stance.

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SiOWfa15: Science in Our World: Certainty and Controversy

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As I sit in my dorm, beating my roommate badly in NHL 2015, I start to think about doing homework. The natural reaction to that thought is homework can wait because this is a must-win game for bragging rights. Then I start to think: do video games affect your brain?

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Timothy Brown
CRAAP 45
4/27

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Teaching Problem Solving Skills to Children - Why are they so Important?

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Problem solving is a necessary life skills for your children and can make your children bold to face any type of difficult situations.

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Violent Video Games and Bad Behavior: The Evidence Mounts

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Violent Video Games and Bad Behavior: The Evidence Mounts

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posted by: Stacey Woods
CRAAP- 46

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Still convinced that violent video games are harmless fun? You might want to put down that console and consider the findings of two new research papers.

The first, a meta-analysis of 98 studies with nearly 37,000 participants, concludes without equivocation that "violent video games increase aggression."

The second, which describes new research from Italy, provides further evidence of that troubling dynamic, and indicates they also lead to "decreased self-control and increased cheating."

"Many real-world decisions require self-regulation of moral behavior," writes a research team led by psychologist Alessandro Gabbiadini. "Our study indicates that playing violent video games can interfere with this ability."

"Participants who played a violent video game for only 35 minutes exhibited less self-control, cheated more, and behaved more aggressively than did participants who played a nonviolent video game."

The Italian study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, featured 172 high school students. After 10 minutes of practice, each played a violent video game ( Grand Theft Auto III or Grand Theft Auto San Andreas) or a non-violent one ( Pinball 3D or Mini Golf 3D) for 35 minutes.

Participants were told they could snack from a bowl of M&Ms placed next to the computer as they played. However, they were also warned that eating too much candy too quickly was unhealthy. Their level of self-control was measured by noting how much of the chocolate they consumed.

After finishing play, they completed a survey designed to measure their level of moral disengagement. On a one-to-seven scale ("completely agree" to "completely disagree"), participants responded to a series of statements indicating a tendency to think of moral behavior in relative terms.

Examples include "Compared to the illegal things people do, taking some things from a store without paying for them is not very serious" and "It is OK to insult a classmate, because beating him/her is worse."

The experiment concluded with two tests designed to measure aggression and the tendency to cheat.

Participants were told they could earn one raffle ticket for each problem they solved on a 10-item logic test. They scored their own responses and took a lottery ticket from an envelope for each correct answer. Researchers measured cheating by comparing the number of tickets taken with the actual number of correct answers.

In addition, participants took part in a "competitive reaction time task" in which the winner of each round "could blast the loser with loud noise through headphones." Researchers measured aggression by how loud and long participants blasted the unpleasant sound.

The results were consistent across the board: "Participants who played a violent video game for only 35 minutes exhibited less self-control, cheated more, and behaved more aggressively than did participants who played a nonviolent video game."

Specifically, those who played the violent game ate more M&Ms, took more unearned raffle tickets, and gave their rivals a longer and louder blast of noise.

"Although very few teenagers were unaffected by violent video games," Gabbiadini and his colleagues write, "individuals high in moral disengagement were far more affected than those low in moral disengagement." This suggests a subset of players-those prone to find ways to justify their unethical behavior-are particularly susceptible to the effects of these games.

Given this new evidence, "it seems more appropriate to assess the consequences of violent video games on behavior in terms of a gradient of intensity of the effects, rather than just the presence/absence of such consequences," they conclude.

That last point provides interesting context for the meta-study, which was conducted by researchers Tobias Greitemeyer and Dirk Mügge and published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. It finds "strong evidence that violent video games do affect aggressive outcomes."

Aggressive behavior is multi-determined, with violent video game exposure being one source among many others (and some of them having a stronger influence than do violent video games).

On the other hand, even small effects-and the effect of violent video games is small to medium in its effect size-can have a negative impact on a societal level when many people are exposed to it, which certainly applies to violent video games.

Thus, in our view, violent video game play should be regarded as a risk factor for aggressive behavior.

The Italian researchers both expand on that notion-they find it's actually a risk factor for several types of negative behavior-and narrow it somewhat, suggesting certain players are more susceptible to such effects than others. These findings, which need to be replicated, potentially add important nuance to the debate.

But they don't change the fundamental equation: Violent video games can, and do, impact players' attitudes and behaviors. And not for the better.

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Violent Video Games and Bad Behavior: The Evidence Mounts

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Still convinced that violent video games are harmless fun? You might want to put down that console and consider the findings of two new research papers. The first, a meta-analysis of 98 studies with nearly 37,000 participants, concludes without equivocation that "violent video games increase aggression."

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It's A Duel: How Do Violent Video Games Affect Kids?

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It's A Duel: How Do Violent Video Games Affect Kids?

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posted by: Stacey Woods
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Scientists have long clashed over whether violent video games have an adverse effect on young people. Indeed, the conclusions of different groups of researchers are so contradictory they could give a tennis umpire whiplash.

The Supreme Court recently overturned a California ban on violent video games. The court said that video games, even offensive ones, were protected by the First Amendment, and that there wasn't clear evidence that playing games such as Grand Theft Auto and Postal really harmed people.

Playing violent video games probably will not turn your child into a psychopathic killer, but I would want to know how the child treats his or her parents, how they treat their siblings, how much compassion they have.

So what explains the vehement disagreements among scientists about the effects of these games? The irony is that scientists who think the games are harmful and those who think they're not are both looking at the same evidence. They just see two different things.

Most experiments into the effects of violent video games are done with college students. Researchers divide them into two groups. One group plays a violent game, the other a non-violent video game. Then researchers measure how students in each group feel and how they behave. You can't give young people guns and knives to see whether they'll kill each other after playing a violent video game, so scientists have come up with other ways to measure emotional responses.

Social psychologist Brad Bushman at The Ohio State University once showed students violent pictures: one of a man shoving a gun down another man's throat; another of a man holding a knife to a woman's throat.

"What we found is for people who were exposed to a lot of violent video games, their brains did not respond to the violent images," Bushman said. "They were numb, if you will."

Bushman also had the students blast each other with loud noises.

"We try to make the noise as unpleasant as possible by thinking of every noise you hate," Bushman said. "So like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard, dentist drills, sirens."

Students could make the sound as loud as a smoke alarm, if they wanted. Some students in the experiments got really mean.

"Everybody was more aggressive if they'd played a violent game than if they'd played a nonviolent game, and the more numb they were, the more aggressive they were in terms of blasting their opponent with loud noise through headphones," Bushman said.
Desensitization Toward Violence?
That sounds airtight. Bushman believes that violent video games desensitize young people. Compared to people in the real world who are gentle and compassionate, students playing these games seem to be mean and hurtful.

But Chris Ferguson, a psychologist at the Texas A&M International University, disagrees. He's conducted similar experiments and also sees similar behavior changes among students. But he interprets them very differently.

Compared to people in the real world who shoot and stab one another, Ferguson said the changes in behavior he's seen among students are transient and trivial.

"You know most of the debate now is really on to these minor acts of aggressiveness," he said. "You know we're talking about little children sticking their tongues out at each other and that sort of thing."

Ferguson says it's easy to think senseless video game violence can lead to senseless violence in the real world. But he says that's mixing up two separate things.

"Many of the games do have morally objectionable material and I think that is where a lot of the debate on this issue went off the rails," he said. "We kind of mistook our moral concerns about some of these video games, which are very valid - I find many of the games to be morally objectionable - and then assumed that what is morally objectionable is harmful."

In other words, if you define harm as getting in trouble with the police, violent video games probably aren't a risk. But if you're worried about lesser kinds of harm, they can be a risk.

"Playing violent video games probably will not turn your child into a psychopathic killer," Bushman said, "but I would want to know how the child treats his or her parents, how they treat their siblings, how much compassion they have."

So the dueling scientific studies aren't really at odds with each other - they just make different assumptions. Which may be why Bushman and Ferguson agree on one thing: as fathers, they've banned their own kids from playing violent video games.

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Dispute: How Violent Video Games Affect Kids

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Scientists have long clashed over whether violent video games have an adverse effect on young people, and recently the Supreme Court overturned a California ban on violent video games. It's unclear whether playing games such as Grand Theft Auto and Postal really harm people.

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Video Games and Children: Playing with ViolencePosted By: Stacey Woods

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Video Games and Children: Playing with ViolencePosted By: Stacey Woods

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SPEAKING OUT: THE DECLINE OF ART MEANS THE DECLINE OF FUTURE INNOVATORS

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SPEAKING OUT: THE DECLINE OF ART MEANS THE DECLINE OF FUTURE INNOVATORS

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posted by Toreona Walls
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Speaking Out: The Decline of Art Means the Decline of Future Innovators | NAESP

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By George Szekely Principal, March/April 2016 As we rise to meet President Obama's call to educate a nation of innovators, we must consider the role of art in learning. Children are our future architects, fashion designers, industrial designers, and visionaries.

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The Good and Bad News About Arts Education in U.S. Schools

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The Good and Bad News About Arts Education in U.S. Schools

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Posted By: Toreona Walls
4.27.17

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Posted by: Toreona Walls
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4.27.17

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The Truth About Violent Video Games and Kids, Part 1

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The Truth About Violent Video Games and Kids, Part 1

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Posted By: Stacey Woods
4/21
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8 Ways Violent Games Are Bad for Your Kids

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8 Ways Violent Games Are Bad for Your Kids

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Posted By: Stacey Woods
4/21
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Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

Life-changing. That sums up the reviews I read about Jane's game, SuperBetter. A personal life coach wrapped into a $4.99 app that is actually fun to play -- and will change your life in a super better way. I nodded with excitement (and already added over 21 minutes to my life!) as I watched her TED video three times.

But if a game truly has the power to unlock such positivity on people's lives, it made me think about some of the other "what ifs" behind the power of gaming, especially its effect on the developing brain. So, what happens when we expose our kids - our next generation of leaders, cure-seekers, and innovators - to games that are not-so-super?

As a mom of three boys who like to shoot and blast things, and as co-creator of a wholesome game that teaches kids to solve real-world problems, my mind immediately worries about all the violent video games that are out there. You know, those "M" for Mature games that parents turn their backs to while the kids stay entertained for hours.

Here are eight ways that I found violent games are bad for your kids:

1. First-Hand Role in Killing Process. To kids, virtual experiences feel very real, not only because the graphics today are so amazing, but because they are taking on a first-person role in the killing process. Rather than just passively watching a rated-R violent movie, when kids play a game, they are one of the main characters inside the adventure. The entire experience becomes a more meaningful -- and deadly - in their brains, which are forming new connections every day.

2. Measure Success through Killing. You know that "I did it!" feeling you get from Jane's SuperBetter game when you accomplish a mini task? A feeling of success should come from positive, challenging achievements -- not the accomplishment of killing someone else. What kind of message is that sending to our kids?

I don't know about you, but I don't want my kids learn about the birds and bees through a game. -- Laura St. John

3. Disrespect Women. I am a pretty tough little chick: I live in a house filled with plenty of testosterone, and they all know not to mess with me. But majority of the ultra-violent games feature violence toward women. Now if some games can teach the habits of heroes, why would we ever harness the power of gaming to be mean toward me, or your girls -- your daughters, my boys' future girlfriends?

4. Inappropriate Sexual Content. Just like you wouldn't allow your child to go to or rent a rated R movie because of its inappropriate sexual content, many violent games are just as bad, if not worse. I don't know about you, but I don't want my kids learn about the birds and bees through a game.

5. Resolve Conflicts through Violence. Violent video games show kids how to express themselves physically, in a violent way. It's already way easier for a child to push another child when they're angry than to express their emotions and resolve a conflict through words. My boys have their fair share of quarrels, but I don't want them to learn they should resolve conflicts by hurting each other.

6. De-Sensitizes Killing. When you hear the tragic, heart-wrenching stories such as what happened in Newtown, Conn., you wonder how exposure to violent games de-sensitizes people to the act of killing other people. The thought of my little boys picking up a gun to shoot someone is not only disgusting, it teaches them to disrespect life. What if that could carry over to their own life or others? Ick, that makes me shudder.

7. Explicit Language. The first time one of my sons was exposed to a violent game, I learned quickly that he was guilty after he said, "Oh, sh@#!" Enough said.

8. Fuzzy Line Between Real and Make-Believe. Little kids have a hard time distinguishing the line between the real-world and the virtual gaming world, as young minds are still forming what is real and what is make-believe. I put it into perspective like this: If my kids believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny, then how could they possibly understand that these other bad guys in games, who look real, are not really real?

Now don't get me wrong: I am all for allowing kids plenty of screen time to be useful, productive, creative, and help make the world a better place. When used appropriately, technology has the power and potential to be the best tool ever invented. So now go use your power-ups for the greater good, and help make the world a SuperBetter place.
Ideas are not set in stone. When exposed to thoughtful people, they morph and adapt into their most potent form. TEDWeekends will highlight some of today's most intriguing ideas and allow them to develop in real time through your voice! Tweet #TEDWeekends to share your perspective or email tedweekends@hufﬁngtonpost.com to learn about future weekend's ideas to contribute as a writer.

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8 Ways Violent Games Are Bad for Your Kids

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Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below. Life-changing. That sums up the reviews I read about Jane's game, SuperBetter. A personal life coach wrapped into a $4.99 app that is actually fun to play -- and will change your life in a super better way.

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Timothy Brown
CRAAP- 46
4/21

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Hand-Eye Coordination - Definition, Description, Common problems

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Hand-eye coordination is the ability of the vision system to coordinate the information received through the eyes to control, guide, and direct the hands in the accomplishment of a given task, such as handwriting or catching a ball. Hand-eye coordination uses the eyes to direct att…

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The Positive and Negative Effects of Video Games

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The Positive and Negative Effects of Video Games

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Timothy Brown
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Updated April 19, 2020
by Ronaldo Tumbokon

Are video games good or bad for you? It can be both.

Video games are frowned upon by parents as time-wasters, and worse, some education experts think that these games corrupt the brain. Playing violent video games are easily blamed by the media and some experts as the reason why some young people become violent or commit extreme anti-social behavior. But many scientists and psychologists find that video games can actually have many benefits - the main one is making kids smart. Video games may actually teach kids high-level thinking skills that they will need in the future.

"Video games change your brain," according to University of Wisconsin psychologist C. Shawn Green. Playing video games change the brain's physical structure the same way as do learning to read, playing the piano, or navigating using a map. Much like exercise can build muscle, the powerful combination of concentration and rewarding surges of neurotransmitters like dopamine strengthen neural circuits that can build the brain.

According to Marc Palaus, author of the study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, there is a broad consensus in the scientific community that playing video games not only changes how the brain performs, but also its structure.

Below are the good and bad effects of video games - their benefits and disadvantages, according to researchers and child experts:

The Benefits: Positive Effects of Video Games

When your child plays video games, it gives his brain a real workout. In many video games, the skills required to win involve abstract and high level thinking. These skills are not even taught at school.

The main benefits of playing video games involve enhancing mental skills that include:

1. Problem solving and logic - When a child plays a game such as The Incredible Machine, Angry Birds or Cut The Rope, he trains his brain to come up with creative ways to solve puzzles and other problems in short bursts

2. Hand-eye coordination, fine motor and spatial skills. In shooting games, the character may be running and shooting at the same time. This requires the real-world player to keep track of the position of the character, where he/she is heading, his speed, where the gun is aiming, if the gunfire is hitting the enemy, and so on. All these factors need to be taken into account, and then the player must then coordinate the brain's interpretation and reaction with the movement in his hands and fingertips. This process requires a great deal of eye-hand coordination and visual-spatial ability to be successful. Research also suggests that people can learn iconic, spatial, and visual attention skills from video games. There have been even studies with adults showing that experience with video games is related to better surgical skills. Also, a reason given by experts as to why fighter pilots of today are more skillful is that this generation's pilots are being weaned on video games.

3. Planning, resource management and logistics. The player learns to manage resources that are limited, and decide the best use of resources, the same way as in real life. This skill is honed in strategy games such as SimCity, Age of Empires, and Railroad Tycoon. Notably, The American Planning Association, the trade association of urban planners and Maxis, the game creator, have claimed that SimCity has inspired a lot of its players to take a career in urban planning and architecture.

4. Multitasking, simultaneous tracking of many shifting variables and managing multiple objectives. In strategy games, for instance, while developing a city, an unexpected surprise like an enemy might emerge. This forces the player to be flexible and quickly change tactics.

Cognitive researcher Daphne Bavalier talks about how video games can help us learn, focus and, fascinatingly, multitask.

5. Quick thinking, making fast analysis and decisions. Sometimes the player does this almost every second of the game giving the brain a real workout. According to researchers at the University of Rochester, led by Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive scientist, games simulating stressful events such as those found in battle or action games could be a training tool for real-world situations. The study suggests that playing action video games primes the brain to make quick decisions. Video games can be used to train soldiers and surgeons, according to the study. Importantly, decisions made by action-packed video game players are no less accurate. According to Bavelier, "Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference."

6. Accuracy - Action games, according to a study by the University of Rochester, train the player's brain to make faster decisions without losing accuracy. In today's world, it is important to move quickly without sacrificing accuracy.

7. Strategy and anticipation - Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, calls this "telescoping." The gamer must deal with immediate problems while keeping his long-term goals on his horizon.

8. Situational awareness - - Defense News reported that the Army include video games to train soldiers to improve their situational awareness in combat. Many strategy games also require the player to become mindful of sudden situational changes in the game and adapt accordingly.

9. Developing reading and math skills - The young gamer reads to get instructions, follow storylines of games, and get information from the game texts. Also, using math skills is important to win in many games that involves quantitative analysis like managing resources.

10. Perseverance - In higher levels of a game, the player usually fails the first time around, but he keeps on trying until he succeeds and move on to the next level.

11. Pattern recognition - Games have internal logic in them, and the player figures it out by recognizing patterns.

12. Estimating skills

13. Inductive reasoning and hypothesis testing - James Paul Gee, professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that playing a video game is similar to working through a science problem. Like a student in a laboratory, the gamer must come up with a hypothesis. For example, the gamer must constantly try out combinations of weapons and powers to use to defeat an enemy. If one does not work, he changes hypothesis and try the next one. Video games are goal-driven experiences, says Gee, which are fundamental to learning.

14. Mapping - The gamer use in-game maps or build maps on his head to navigate around virtual worlds.

15. Memory - Playing first person shooter games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield series enables the player to effectively judge what information should be stored in his working memory and what can be discarded considering the task at hand, according to a study published in the Psychological Research.

16. Concentration - A study conducted by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory reveal that children with attention-deficit disorder who played Dance Dance Revolution improve their reading scores by helping them concentrate.

17. Improved ability to rapidly and accurately recognize visual information - A study from Beth Israel Medical Center NY, found a direct link between skill at video gaming and skill at keyhole, or laparoscopic, surgery. Doctors who spent at least three hours a week playing video games made about 37 % fewer mistakes in surgery and performed the task 27% faster than non-gaming surgeons. Another study found that people who play video games on a regular basis are better at registering visual data and are therefore quicker visual learners. They are also more resistant to perceptual interference, and are therefore able to learn for a longer period of time in distracting environments.

18. Reasoned judgments

19. Taking risks - Winning in any game involves a player's courage to take risks. Most games do not reward players who play safely.

20. How to respond to challenges

21. How to respond to frustrations

22. How to explore and rethink goals

23. Teamwork and cooperation when played with others - Many multiplayer games such as Team Fortress 2 involve cooperation with other online players in order to win. These games encourage players to make the most of their individual skills to contribute to the team. According to a survey by Joan Ganz Cooney Center, teachers report that their students become better collaborators after using digital games in the classroom.

24. Management - Management simulation games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon and Zoo tycoon teach the player to make management decisions and manage the effective use of finite resources. Other games such as Age of Empires and Civilization even simulate managing the course of a civilization.

25. Simulation, real world skills. The most well known simulations are flight simulators, which attempt to mimic the reality of flying a plane. All of the controls, including airspeed, wing angles, altimeter, and so on, are displayed for the player, as well as a visual representation of the world, and are updated in real time.

26. Non-English speaking players report learning English by playing games.

See also List of Video Games That May Be Good for the Brain

Other Benefits of Video Games:

Video games introduce your child to computer technology and the online world. You should recognize that we are now living in a high-tech, sophisticated world. Video games make your child adapt and be comfortable with the concepts of computing. This is particularly important for girls who typically are not as interested in high technology as much as boys.

Video games allow you and your child to play together and can be a good bonding activity. Some games are attractive to kids as well as adults, and they could be something that they share in common. When your child knows more than you, he can teach you how to play and this allows you to understand your child's skills and talents.

Video games make learning fun. Your kid likes games because of the colors, the animation, the eye candy, as well as the interactivity and the challenge and the rewards of winning. The best way to learn is when the learner is having fun at the same time. That's why video games are natural teachers. Having fun gives your kid motivation to keep on practicing, which is the only way to learn skills. Video games is also capable of making difficult subjects such as math fun.

Video games can make your child creative. A study by the Michigan State University's Children and Technology Project found a relation between video game playing and greater creativity, regardless of gender, race or type of video game played. (In contrast, use of cell phones, the Internet and computers other than video games was unrelated to creativity, the study found).

Video games can improve your child's decision making speed. People who played action-based video and computer games made decisions 25% faster than others without sacrificing accuracy, according to a study from the University of Rochester. Other studies suggests that most expert gamers can make choices and act on them up to six times a second-four times faster than most people, and can pay attention to more than six things at once without getting confused, compared to only four by the average person. Surprisingly, the violent action games that often worry parents most had the strongest beneficial effect on the brain, according to cognitive neuroscientist Daphne Bavelier, who studies the effect of action games at Switzerland's University of Geneva and the University of Rochester in New York.

Video games increase your child's self-confidence and self-esteem as he masters games. In many games, the levels of difficulty are adjustable. As a beginner, your kid begins at the easy level and by constant practicing and slowly building skills, he becomes confident in handling more difficult challenges. Since the cost of failure is lower, he does not fear making mistakes. He takes more risks and explores more. Your kid can transfer this attitude to real life.

Video games give your child a feeling of happiness or well-being, which is a human psychological need, according to Berni Good, a cyberpsychologist. In addition to giving your child a sense of competence or mastery when he progresses through game levels, video gaming also helps him relate to others in a meaningful way when he shares his gaming experiences with others in multiplayer gaming or in social media. It also gives him a feeling of being a master of his own destiny.

Games that involve multiple players encourage your child to work cooperatively to achieve his goals. Your kid learns to listen to the ideas of others, formulate plans with other kids, and distribute tasks based on skills. Some online games are even played internationally, and this can introduce your kid to players of different nationalities and cultures. This fosters friendships among different people.

Video games that require your child to be active, such as Dance Dance Revolution and Nintendo Wii Boxing, and games that use Kinect, give your kid a good workout. When playing these active games for 10 minutes, your kid spends energy equal to or exceeding that produced by spending the same amount of time on a three miles an hour treadmill walk.

Video games make players' visions become more sensitive to slightly different shades of color, according to a University of Rochester study. This is called contrast sensitivity, and observed particularly in first person shooter games players. "When people play action games, they're changing the brain's pathway responsible for visual processing," according to lead researcher Daphne Bavelier. The training might be helping the visual system to make better use of the information it receives.

Video games may improve eyesight. Studies have shown that video gaming have better than average eyesight. A study performed by researchers from McMaster University has also found that playing video games could help improve eyesight by teaching the brain to spot small details, follow movements and spot subtle light changes, at least for people with visual difficulties. Another study by vision scientists at the University of Rochester and Vanderbilt University found that children with poor vision see vast improvement in their peripheral vision after only eight hours of training via kid-friendly video games.

In addition, one neuroscience research suggests that expert players of action real-time strategy games like League of Legends become better at allocating brain resources between visual stimuli that compete for attention. The study shows that these players have faster information processing, allocate more cognitive power to individual visual stimuli and allocate limited resources between successive stimuli more effective through time. Moreover, the effect seems to have a long-term effect on the brain, and the study's author concludes that these games can be a powerful tool for cognitive training.

Video games help children with dyslexia read faster and with better accuracy, according to a study by the journal Current Biology. In addition, spatial and temporal attention also improved during action video game training. Attentional improvement can directly translate into better reading abilities. Another study suggests that just one hour of gaming can improve visual selective attention, which is how scientists refer to the brain's ability to focus while simultaneously disregarding less relevant information.

Dr. Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California states that playing first person shooter games such as Call of Duty have shown to have a "benefit on high congnitive abilities" including focusing for long periods and multi-tasking. He even suggests that these games can be prescribed to children who are struggling to focus in class.

Kids are not necessarily drawn to video games because of their violence. The attraction lies in their being rewarded by awesome displays of explosions, fireworks, and yes, blood splattering. Also, violent games have the most emotional appeal for kids. But these factors are only secondary to what kids actually enjoy in these games - the opportunity to develop and master skills and have the freedom to make choices in the game universe.

Violent video games may act as a release of pent-up aggression and frustration of your kid. When your kid vents his frustration and anger in his game, this diffuses his stress. Games can provide a positive aggression outlet the same way as football and other violent sports. A research suggests that the outlet provided by violent games may make gamers with violent tendencies less likely to commit real world crimes

Playing video games is safer than having your teens do drugs, alcohol and street racing in the real world.

A study done by researchers at North Carolina State University, York University and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology concluded that playing online games do not replace offline social lives, but is expanding it. Loners are the outliers in gaming, not the norm.

A 2013 study by the Berlin's Max Planck Institute for Human Development and St. Hedwig-Hospital found a significant gray matter increase in the right hippocampus, the right prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum of those who played Super Mario 64 for 30 minutes a day over two months. These regions of the brain are crucial for spatial navigation, strategic planning, working memory and motor performance. Indeed, the increased gray matter in these parts of the brain is positively correlated with better memory. Decreased gray matter is correlated with bipolar disorder and dementia. What's also striking is that those who enjoyed playing the game has a more pronounced gain in gray matter volume. The study suggests that video game training could be used to counteract known risk factors for smaller hippocampus and prefrontal cortex volume in, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and neurodegenerative disease.

Other studies found that playing video games change the structure of the brain. Brain regions involved in attention were more efficient in gamers, and regions related to visuospatial skills that were both bigger and more efficient.

Another study published in Scientific Reports have found that Action Video Gamers have more gray matter and better integration of brain networks associated with attention and sensorimotor function.

A Bristol University research shows that the "gamification" of learning can reduce the activity of a particular brain network which is responsible for mind wandering. When designed and developed properly, computer-based games can have a beneficial effect on learning.

A number of research, including the one done in Ruhr-University Bochum show that video gamers have an advantage at learning compared to non-gamers. In their test, video gamers performed significantly better than non-gamers in a learning competition, and gamers showed an increased activity in the brain areas relevant for learning. According to the lead author Sabrina Schenk, "Our study shows that gamers are better in analyzing a situation quickly, to generate new knowledge and to categorize facts - especially in situations with high uncertainties."

A study published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology in 2016 suggests that "video game use is not associated with an increased risk of mental health problems. On the contrary, the data presented here suggest that video games are a protective factor, especially regarding peer relationship problems for the children who are the most involved in video games. Finally, video games seem to be linked to better intellectual functioning and academic achievement."

Another study suggests that playing some video games may even overcome the cognitive skills affected by poverty like focus, self-control, and memory, and may help reduce the achievement gaps related to poverty that are seen in school.

Video games can stimulate your child's interest in technology, and can be gateway to learn technological skills such as coding or programming.

Also, video games may actually help your child find a job in the future. Employers from various industries are actually find résumés that include backgrounds in making or playing videogames a positive because they think video gamers have online collaboration, problem solving and other critical workplace skills.

Finally, according to a study, gamers actually tend to be more social, more successful and more educated than people who make fun of them.

Considering all these, be reminded again that the type of genre affects the brain differently, and one should not generalize that all video games have the same effect or benefit. For example, the researchers of a study hypothesize that playing strategy games result in improving memory tasks, while playing action games that stimulate the limbic area and elicit emotional arousal might be beneficial to those with mood disorders.

Experts believe that parents playing video games with their kids can boost better communication between them.

See also: How to choose a video game for your child and yourself

The Bad: Negative Effects of Video Games

Most of the bad effects of video games are blamed on the violence they contain. Children who play more violent video games are more likely to have increased aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and decreased prosocial helping, according to a scientific study (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). Also according to Dmitri A. Christakis of the Seattle Children's Research Institute, those who watch a lot of simulated violence, such as those in video games, can become immune to it, more inclined to act violently themselves, and are less likely to behave emphatically. Another study suggests that chronic exposure to violent video games is not only associated with lower empathy, but emotional callousness as well.
This, however, is still hotly debated because there is also evidence that shows that excessive use of video games does not lead to long-term desensitization and lack of empathy. A 2017 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, for example, didn't find any long-term effects of playing violent video games and empathy. Another study from University of York and another by the Royal Society found no evidence to support the theory that video games make players more violent, and another study suggests that there is no increase in the level of aggression of players who had long-term exposure to violent video games.

Although politicians oftentimes declare video games as a cause of gun violence, there is currently little scientific evidence that links playing video games, even the "gruesome and grisly" ones, to violence.

On the other hand, The American Psychological Association (APA) concluded that there is a "consistent correlation" between violent game use and aggression, but finds insufficient evidence to link violent video play to criminal violence. An open letter by a number of media scholars, psychologists and criminologists, however, find APA's study and conclusion to be misleading and alarmist. Many experts including Henry Jenkins of Massachusetts Institute of Technology have noted that there is a decreased rate of juvenile crime which coincides with the popularity of games such as Death Race, Mortal Kombat, Doom and Grand Theft auto. He concludes that teenage players are able to leave the emotional effects of the game behind when the game is over. Indeed there are cases of teenagers who commit violent crimes who also spend great amount of time playing video games such as those involved in the Columbine and Newport cases. It appears that there will always be violent people, and it just so happen that many of them also enjoy playing violent video games.
Also, a meta analysis conducted by the Stentson University psychologist Christopher Ferguson, that examines 101 studies found that "violent video games had little impact on kids' aggression, mood, helping behavior or grades." According to Ferguson, "Any claims that there is consistent evidence that violent video games encourage aggression are simply false."

Also, in 2018, an analysis of 24 studies involving 17000 youngsters from countries including the U.S., Canada, Germany and Japan and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found those who played violent games such as "Grand Theft Auto," "Call of Duty" and "Manhunt" were more likely to exhibit behavior such as being sent to the principal's office for fighting or hitting a non-family member. According to Jay Hull, the study's lead author "If your kids are playing these games, either these games are having a warping effect on right and wrong or they have a warped sense of right or wrong and that's why they are attracted to these games. Either way you should be concerned about it." Hull's previous research suggests players may also practice riskier behaviors such as reckless driving, binge drinking, smoking and unsafe sex.

Other studies that seem to indicate that playing video games have a connection to aggressive thoughts and behavior are those done by Anderson & Dill, 2000 and Gentile, Lynch & Walsh, 2004.

Some experts who believe that there is a connection between video games and violence blame the games' interactive nature. In many games, kids are rewarded for being more violent. The act of violence is done repeatedly. The child is in control of the violence and experiences the violence in his own eyes (killings, kicking, stabbing and shooting). This active participation, repetition and reward are effective tools for learning behavior.

Kids can be addicted to video gaming. The World Health Organization in June 2018 declared gaming addiction as a mental health disorder. A study by the Minneapolis-based National Institute for Media and the Family suggests that video games can be addictive for kids, and that the kids' addiction to video games increases their depression and anxiety levels. Addicted kids also exhibit social phobias. Not surprisingly, kids addicted to video games see their school performance suffer. MRI scans reveal that addictive video games can have a similar effect on kids' brains as drugs and alcohol. A series of studines by California State University found that the impulsive part of the brain, known as the amygdala-striatal system was more sensitive and smaller in excessive game players. According to Professor Ofir Turel, heavy game players between 13 and 15 whose self-control system is not yet well-developed can have increased susceptibility to other forms of addiction and can be more predisposed to impulsive and risky behaviors later in life.
Click here for more info on video game addiction, how to treat it, and tips on how to avoid getting your kids addicted to video games.

A 2017 study from the Université de Montréal suggests that playing action video games like Call of Duty may actually harm the brain. Most study participants mainly use an area of the brain called the caudate nucleus. These players navigate through the game terrain using in-system navigation tools or on-screen GPS, relying on navigational "habit" instead of active learning. It appears that this causes an increase in the amount of gray matter in their caudate nucleus, while it decreases in the hippocampus. Reduced gray matter in the hippocampus has previously been linked to higher risks of brain illnesses, including depression, schizophrenia, PTSD, and Alzheimer's disease. However players who play games that requires players to navigate using spatial strategies like the 3D Super Mario games have increased grey matter in the hippocampus.

Too much video game playing makes your kid socially isolated. Also, he may spend less time in other activities such as doing homework, reading, sports, and interacting with the family and friends. On the other hand, a study by researchers at the North Carolina State University, New York and the University Of Ontario Institute Of Technology points out that gamers usually do not replace their offline social lives with online game playing, but rather it expands them. In fact, among gamers, being a loner is not the norm.

Some video games teach kids the wrong values. Violent behavior, vengeance and aggression are rewarded. Negotiating and other nonviolent solutions are often not options. Women are often portrayed as weaker characters that are helpless or sexually provocative. On the other hand, a University of Buffalo study suggests that violence and bad behavior played in the virtual world may be contributing to better behavior in the real world. Gamers who play violent games may feel guilty about their behavior in the virtual world and this may make them be more sensitive to the moral issues they violated during game play.

Games can confuse reality and fantasy.

Academic achievement may be negatively related to over-all time spent playing video games. Studies have shown that the more time a kid spends playing video games, the poorer is his performance in school. (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Gentile, Lynch & Walsh, 2004). A study by Argosy University's Minnesota School on Professional Psychology found that video game addicts argue a lot with their teachers, fight a lot with their friends, and score lower grades than others who play video games less often. Other studies show that many game players routinely skip their homework to play games, and many students admitted that their video game habits are often responsible for poor school grades.

A 2019 study found that among screen-based activities, playing video games and television viewing are the ones most negatively associated with academic outcomes.

Although some studies suggest that playing video games enhances a child's concentration, other studies, such as a 2012 paper published in Psychology of Popular Media Culture, have found that games can hurt and help children's attention issues - improving the ability to concentrate in short bursts but damaging long-term concentration.

Dr Philip A Chan and Professor Terry Rabinowitz, writing in the Annals of General Psychiatry, concluded that: "Adolescents who play more than one hour of console or Internet video games may have more or more intense symptoms of ADHD or inattention than those who do not." This negative effect may lead to problems in school.

Video games may also have bad effects on some children's health, including obesity, video-induced seizures. and postural, muscular and skeletal disorders, such as tendonitis, nerve compression, carpal tunnel syndrome.

When playing online, your kid can pick up bad language and behavior from other people, and may make your kid vulnerable to online dangers. Often posing as children, sexual predators and other bad actors are meeting kids onling through multiplayer video games and chat apps

Kids spending too much time playing video games may exhibit impulsive behavior and have attention problems. This is according to a new study published in the February 2012 issue of the Journal of Psychology and Popular Media Culture. For the study, attention problems were defined as difficulty engaging in or sustaining behavior to reach a goal.

According to Catherine Steiner-Adair, a Harvard-affiliated psychologist and author of the best-selling book "The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationship in the Digital Age", if kids are allowed to play "Candy Crush" on the way to school, the trip will be quiet, but it's not what kids need. "They need time to daydream, deal with anxieties, process their thoughts and share them with parents, who can provide reassurance."

See also:
The Best Educational Apps for Toddler and Babies

Related: Positive and negative effects of social media on children.
Also: Educational Toys and Games to Help Make Your Kids Smart

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25+ Positive and Negative Effects of Video Games - Raise Smart Kid

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Updated April 19, 2020 by Ronaldo Tumbokon Are video games good or bad for you? It can be both. Video games are frowned upon by parents as time-wasters, and worse, some education experts think that these games corrupt the brain.

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Arts Education Matters: We Know, We Measured It

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Arts Education Matters: We Know, We Measured It

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Toreona Walls

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Commentary

Though the arts receive relatively little attention from policymakers and school leaders, exposing young people to art and culture can have a big impact on their development. The problem is that almost no one is bothering to study and document the extent to which the arts and culture can affect students. Instead, policymakers, researchers, and schools are typically focused on what is regularly and easily measured: math and reading achievement. This leads defenders of the arts to attempt to connect the arts to improved math and reading scores-a claim for which there is almost no rigorous evidence. Other arts advocates believe that the benefits cannot and need not be measured.

But the important effects of art and cultural experiences on students can be rigorously measured. In fact, we recently conducted two studies that used random-assignment research designs to identify causal effects of exposure to the arts through museum and theater attendance. In the museum study, we held a lottery with nearly 11,000 students from 123 Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma schools, roughly half of whom were assigned to visit Crystal Bridges of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., while the other half served as the control group. In the live-theater study, we conducted a lottery to offer free tickets to roughly half of the 700 Arkansas students applying to see "Hamlet" or "A Christmas Carol" at a professional theater in Fayetteville.

Education Week Commentary asked leading educators and advocates to discuss the arts in K-12 education. Some of the contributors assert that the arts are a bridge between traditional academic subjects and the creative skills necessary to thrive in a global, 21st-century economy. Others argue for the critical part the arts play in child development.

Regular contributing artists illustrate the package, which continues online with a video that explores the role of the arts in classroom engagement.

This special section is supported by a grant from The Wallace Foundation. Education Week retained sole editorial control over the content of this package; the opinions expressed are the authors' own, however.
Read more from the package.
By comparing outcomes for students who had these art experiences-by chance-with the outcomes of those who did not, we can identify with confidence what the arts do for young people. The approach we took, which is typical in medical research, creates treatment and control groups that are, on average, identical in their backgrounds and prior interests, with only chance determining the distinction between the two groups. Therefore, any subsequent differences we observed in the students were caused by touring an art museum or seeing live theater, not a result of pre-existing differences among them.

We were also careful to focus on outcomes that could plausibly be altered by the arts. We didn't look at math- and reading-test scores because we have no reason to expect that arts experiences would have an impact on them. Lois Hetland and Ellen Winner, who are affiliated with the education research group Project Zero at Harvard University, have conducted systematic reviews of the research literature and found little credible evidence that the benefits of the arts transfer to other academic subjects. We should no more expect the arts to boost math scores than expect math to enhance appreciation for the arts.

Instead, we looked at whether exposure to the arts affected students' knowledge of the arts and altered their desire to consume the arts in the future. We also looked at whether art experiences had an effect on student values, such as tolerance and empathy. Finally, we looked at whether students' ability to engage in critical thinking about the arts was affected by these experiences.

The results across our two experiments were remarkably consistent: These cultural experiences improve students' knowledge about the arts, as well as their desire to become cultural consumers in the future. Exposure to the arts also affects the values of young people, making them more tolerant and empathetic. We suspect that their awareness of different people, places, and ideas through the arts helps them appreciate and accept the differences they find in the broader world. Arts experiences boost critical thinking, teaching students to take the time to be more careful and thorough in how they observe the world. Noticing details in paintings during a school tour, for example, helps train students to consider details in the future.

These improved outcomes may not boost scores on math and reading tests, but most parents, communities, and educators care about them. We don't just want our students to learn vocationally useful skills in math and reading. We also want them to be knowledgeable and frequent patrons of the arts. We want them to be tolerant and empathetic human beings. And we want them to be astute observers of their surroundings. Some of these qualities may help students earn a living, but their importance has more to do with students' development into cultured and humane people.

Our experiments suggest that rigorous study can document the additional effects of the arts on students, including the educational benefits of poetry, literature, music, film, and dance. Future studies could also consider other possible outcomes. Perhaps the arts encourage students to be more engaged in school, improve graduation rates, and increase college attendance, all of which tend to contribute to happiness and productivity.

None of this research will occur, however, until defenders of the arts recognize the need for it. Arts advocates can no longer rely on weak studies that simply compare students who participate in the arts with those who don't. Such studies are pervasive, and the claims they make are likely overblown. Skeptics can correctly wonder whether the research truly demonstrates that the arts make people awesome, or if awesome people are simply attracted to the arts. To convince skeptics of how the arts can influence a student's trajectory, future studies will have to adopt rigorous research designs that can isolate causal effects.

Art collectors are bidding up prices, and enormous fortunes are devoted to acquiring and displaying art. It makes little sense for arts patrons to spend a fortune acquiring and commissioning masterpieces, while failing to demonstrate the benefits of the arts with quality research. To determine whether there are important social benefits derived from arts activities, money should be invested in funding rigorous research, which can be expensive.

If the arts and culture are to remain a vibrant part of children's education, arts patrons will need to step forward to help pay for the kind of quality research that shows not only what those benefits are, but just how significant they can be.

Published in Print: December 3, 2014, as Art Matters We Know, We Measured It

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Jay P. Greene, Brian Kisida, Cari A. Bogulski, Anne Kraybill, Collin Hitt, & Daniel H. Bowen

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Arts Education Matters: We Know, We Measured It

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Commentary Though the arts receive relatively little attention from policymakers and school leaders, exposing young people to art and culture can have a big impact on their development. The problem is that almost no one is bothering to study and document the extent to which the arts and culture can affect students.

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Do video games affect children mentally 

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Do video games affect children mentally 

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Timothy Brown
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Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence? - Violent Video Games - ProCon.org

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Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence? Read pros, cons, and expert responses in the debate.

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Little By Little, Violent Video Games Make Us More Aggressive

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Little By Little, Violent Video Games Make Us More Aggressive

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Posted By: Stacey Woods
4/21
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Violent video games: they may make kids think in more aggressive ways

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New research suggests that hours of exposure to violent media like video games can make kids react in more hostile ways compared to ones who don’t spend lots of time controller-in-hand, reigniting the debate about children and gaming

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Posted By: Robbie Benson
4/20
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When I used to ask students what a poem is, I would get answers like "a painting in words," or "a medium for self-expression," or "a song that rhymes and displays beauty." None of these answers ever really satisfied me, or them, and so for a while I stopped asking the question.

Then one time, I requested that my students bring in to class something that had a personal meaning to them. With their objects on their desks, I gave them three prompts: first, to write a paragraph about why they brought in the item; second, to write a paragraph describing the item empirically, as a scientist might; and third, to write a paragraph in the first-person from the point-of-view of the item. The first two were warm-ups. Above the third paragraph I told them to write "Poem."

Here is what one student wrote:

Poem

I might look weird or terrifying, but really I'm a device that helps people breathe. Under normal circumstances nobody needs me. I mean, I'm only used for emergencies and even then only for a limited time. If you're lucky, you'll never have to use me. Then again, I can see some future time when everybody will have to carry me around.

The item he had brought to class? A gas mask. The point of this exercise wasn't only to illustrate the malleability of language or the playfulness of writing, but to present the idea that a poem is a strange thing which operates as nothing else in the world does.

I suppose most of us have known poems are strange ever since we were infants being put to bed with lullabies like "Rock-a-bye baby," or were children being taught prayers that begin "Our Father who art in Heaven...." The questions soon arose: What idiot put that cradle in a tree? And what's art got to do with my Daddy-God? But this kind of strangeness we got used to. And later, at some point in school, we asked or were made to ask again: What is a poem?

For example, in high school my English teacher handed me Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" and said I had to write an essay about what it meant. I couldn't make heads or tails out of the assignment, and the poem became the object of my hatred. The poem seemed willfully not to make sense. I soon found every poem to be an irritation, a blotch of words, a ludicrous puzzle that got in the way of true understanding as well as true feeling.

Unless you are a poet or writer, it's likely that poems have apprehended you less and less as the years have passed. Occasionally, in a magazine or online you see one-with its ragged right edge and arbitrary-looking line breaks-and it announces itself by what it is not: prose that runs continuously from the left to the right margins of the page. A poem practically dares you not just to look but to read: I am different. I am special. I am other. Ignore me at your peril.

But when are words most like sticks and stones?

Consider a poem lurking in the pages of The New Yorker. There it is staring you in the face: Do you read it as well as it reads you? In terms of ink on paper, it does nothing more than the prose around it, but in terms of apprehension, it draws in your eye and places the poem in a rarefied position and a totally ignorable one all at once. Oh, look, it's a precious little chit of words! What a waste of my time!

But there's also all that white space surrounding it. How much did that cost? The magazine gave up valuable space to print the poem instead of printing a longer article or an advertisement. Nobody bought the copy of The New Yorker for the poem, except perhaps for the poet who wrote it. A poem is a text-a product of writing and rewriting-but unlike articles, stories, or novels, it never really becomes a thing made in order to become a commodity.
Readers have a certain amount of "freedom" in navigating the poem. The caveat is that freedom often requires more work, more self-motivation, and a certain degree of confusion.
A new novel, a memoir, or even a short story collection has the potential for earning big bucks. Of course, this potential is often not realized, but a new book of poems that yields its author more than a thousand-dollar advance is exceedingly rare. Publicists at publishing houses, even the largest ones, dutifully write press releases and send out review copies of poetry collections, but none will tell you that they expect a collection to sell enough copies to break even with the costs of printing it. Like no other book, a book of poems presents itself not as a thing for the marketplace, but as a thing for its own sake.

The epitome of such "sake-ness" are poems that put their "made-ness" right in your face. Variously called visual poems, concrete poems, shape poems, or calligrammes, George Herbert's "Easter Wings" is a canonical example from the 17th century:

The poem's wings, of birds or angels, coincide or illustrate the textual content: the speaker's desire to reach skyward toward the Lord. The visual form provides what we might call a little bonus or lagniappe in meaning, and it also makes us notice the poem as more than a raggedly blotch-the blotch itself is meaning.

In the 19th century, the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé pushed this page-as-canvas idea even further in Un Coup de Dés ("A Throw of the Dice"). His book-length poem not only manipulates black type, font styles, and white space, but also it exploits the boundaries of the page itself, including the gutter-the seam in the middle of a book-which serves as the alley in which the "dice" (i.e., words) are thrown.

Because the poem allows the reader to make multiple connections between phrases and lines-reading across, down, in combination, or according to specific fonts-some scholars view Un Coup de Dés as a precursor to hypertext. As a reader, you have a certain amount of "freedom" in navigating the poem. The caveat is that freedom often requires more work, more self-motivation, and a certain degree of confusion.

Which brings us back to poetry's contemporary predicament: a poem that is so strange, so other, is also a poem many feel they might as well ignore. Here's a poem from the 1960s by Aram Saroyan:

lighght

Yes, that's the whole poem. I know, it seems asinine. When I wrote it on the board and asked my students to examine it, one said, "How do you even read it aloud?" When we tried, we began to understand the intent of the poem. The word "light" seems to be implied, but what's with the apparent typo? After a long silence, another student said, "That's the point-in the ordinary word 'light' we don't pronounce the 'gh'-the 'gh' is silent, and the double 'gh' makes us realize that even more." The poem calls attention to the system of language itself-the stuff of letters in combination-and the relationship between sound and sense. The familiar-a plain word such as "light"-has been made new if only for a brief moment. In Saroyan's own words: "[T]he crux of the poem is to try and make the ineffable, which is light-which we only know about because it illuminates something else - into a thing."

When we come across a poem-any poem-our first assumption should not be to prejudice it as a thing of beauty, but simply as a thing. The linguists and theorists tells us that language is all metaphor in the first place. The word "apple" has no inherent link with that bright red, edible object on my desk right now. But the intricacies of signifiers and signifieds fade from view after college. Because of its special status-set apart in a magazine or a book, all that white space pressing upon it-a poem still has the ability to surprise, if only for a moment which is outside all the real and virtual, the aural and digital chatter that envelopes it, and us.

One might argue that the page is just a metaphor for all that can't be put on it, and that a poem is merely a substitution, for better or for worse, for a lived feeling or event. And yet, one Jewish tradition admonishes that parents teach their children to love the Talmud not by reading it to them first, but by having them lick honey from its pages. That would seem, to me, an ideal way to experience both bee spit and poetry.

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When I used to ask students what a poem is, I would get answers like "a painting in words," or "a medium for self-expression," or "a song that rhymes and displays beauty." None of these answers ever really satisfied me, or them, and so for a while I stopped asking the question.

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What Makes Poetry Different From Other Literature? 

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What Makes Poetry Different From Other Literature? 

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Posted By: Robbie Benson
4/20
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What Makes Poetry Different From Other Literature?

Poetry doesn't necessarily have to conform to limits or formats of any kind, although it can. Poems can be as long as books, such as "Paradise Lost," or two lines long, like Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." They don't have to rhyme or follow any kind of rhythm structure or scheme, or they can be rigidly formulaic. Unlike other types of literature, poetry is limitless in its possibilities, not only in terms of content but also in form. Poetry is probably the most flexible literary genre.

Structure

You can usually identify a poem first by how it looks. As simplistic as it sounds, the lines do not always cross the page, whereas this is almost always true for prose. A poem might contain only one word on a line, or leave a line blank altogether. The text of a poem can even take the shape of an image discussed in the poem. In a concrete poem, the writer makes the text of the poem in the shape of the poem's topic. For example, George Herbert's poem "Easter Wings" is shaped like a pair of wings.

Sound

Although a novelist may sometimes write in a flowing, soothing-sounding poetic style, a poet frequently considers the sound of every syllable in her writing. Poets often use sound devices, such as rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, onomatopoeia or assonance. This involves using words that have similar endings, begin with the same consonants or repeat the same vowel sounds. These techniques influence how a poem sounds when read aloud. They help establish the mood and tone of a poem, thereby contributing to the overall experience of a poem.

Content

Poems can certainly contain a plot line with rising action that builds to a climax. They also may include characters, as in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but this is not a defining characteristic of poetry. A poem can cover as much or as little material as possible. It can simply capture a single image or sensation, such as in Haiku poetry, or it can read like a soliloquy of someone's private thoughts. It could be a lament or a celebration, or a memory, but it doesn't have to contain a story.

Readability

Novels tend to be easy to read. You can sit down and become absorbed by a book for an hour or more. Poems, on the other hand, typically require slow and careful study to glean their full meaning. The lines of a poem tend to be more complex, more "packed with meaning," than lines of text in other types of literature. Because many poems throw grammar to the wind, this lack of familiar structure can make it even more difficult to understand. Punctuation, capitalization and full sentences help guide readers along text, so the absence of them can have a disorienting effect.

About the Author

Nadine Smith has been writing since 2010. She teaches college writing and ESL courses and has several years experience tutoring all ages in English, ESL and literature. Nadine holds a Master of Arts in English language and literature from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, where she led seminars as a teaching assistant.

Photo Credits

Jupiterimages, Brand X Pictures/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images

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What Makes Poetry Different From Other Literature?

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What Makes Poetry Different From Other Literature? Poetry doesn't necessarily have to conform to limits or formats of any kind, although it can. Poems can be as long as books, such as "Paradise Lost," or two lines long, like Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro."

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Posted By: Robbie Benson
4/20
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What Makes Poetry Unique Sound It is meant to be read aloud! Rhythm The beat of the poem The rhyme or meter can determine form such as: Sonnets Haiku The purpose for writing can determine the form such as: Odes Elegies Free Verse No rules or set pattern is called Free Verse Punctuation Normal rules don't apply It's important to "read" the punctuation Forms There are many different forms of poetry with unique rules and patterns Alliteration When the first sound of a word repeats 3+ times.