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Do Video Games Do Enough to Include Everyone?

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WATCH — Do video games do enough to include everyone?

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Elijah Sandiford investigates: Do video games include everyone? In part one he talks to Steve Saylor, the Blind Gamer, about accessibility.

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Sixth Graders Ditch Traditional Lessons to Create Video Game Businesses

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Watch students at the PlayMaker school in Santa Monica, California, engage with games using varying degrees of technology. Video shot and edited by Mike Fritz.
It took seven people to create the "Golden Medallion" spy adventure video game and its advertising campaign. They did their own coding, conducted a beta test, created a website, a commercial and an instagram feed, and came up with incentives to get people to play. What's more, not one of the seven had even finished sixth grade.

"The hardest part was everyone asked me what to do," said project manager Rachel Odebunmi, 11, a sixth grader at the Playmaker School in Santa Monica, California. "I started making these checklists for everyone and I just gave it to them so they wouldn't have to ask me."

In addition to her duties as project manager, Odebunmi also took on the job of advertising manager for their company called Project Imagine and pitched in when help was needed in the art department. The "employees" of Project Imagine were competing against five other companies in their class, each one working to make a video game better than all the others.
Students designed and developed games as part of their curriculum at PlayMaker school in Santa Monica, California.
"It was kind of like running a business, like a mini-business because you are competing with all these other mini-businesses and trying to get your game really popular," said Luisa Cichowski, 12, of Project Imagine. "It kind of shows what goes into this whole collaboration teamwork of running a business."

Collaboration, teamwork and experiential learning happens every day at the Playmaker School, which is made up of the sixth graders who attend the private New Roads School. The Playmaker concept is based on using games and authentic experiences as engagement tools, and creating hands-on lessons that urge children to explore what they're interested in within the boundaries of a given topic.

"It's not handing out a bunch of devices and saying 'OK, press start. Play. You're learning something. Take a test.'"

"We gave kids a chance to actually say 'I want to be a part of this group, this game company but I want to be a part of it in a manner in which I feel confident and strong and that I can bring something to the table,'" said co-teacher Tedd Wakeman. "So the kids that were really interested in the programming side become programmers in these game companies. Kids that are really interested in writing and have a passion for writing wrote narratives for these game companies."
Computers are not necessary for all the game-centered lessons. The students participated in a role-playing game designed to explore the culture of Mesopotamia. They became merchants, builders and civic organizers. In another activity designed to look at the physics of flight, students used Styrofoam pieces to build airplanes with various wing and tail configurations.

The concept for this school centered around game play was devised by Lucien Vattel while he was teaching at the University of Southern California and looking at how the brain reacts to different forms of interactivity.

"It's not handing out a bunch of devices and saying 'OK, press start. Play. You're learning something. Take a test,'" Vattel said. "It's a relationship between the technology, the teacher and student where teacher becomes [the] facilitator of a process of building curiosity, building learning and creating an authentic context."

In order to further their experience as an authentic video game design business, the students did their own beta testing experiment with other students from New Roads.

"We're really into authentic feedback, not having the teacher be the one person whose voice counts," said co-teacher A.J. Webster. "Seventh and 8th graders gave feedback. That feedback went to the 6th graders who then read it [and] they rated the feedback for its effectiveness.

"They desire meaningful feedback so they would go, 'well they said our game was great but they didn't say why.' So they developed on their own this idea: 'we want details, we want real critical thought.'"

Some have come to learn that they also appreciate being able to make choices on how they can best participate and learn in these projects.

"I feel like choice helps me mature in school ... because I feel like having the choice of what you can do really helps you, like, figure out what you really want to do," said Isaac Prevatt, 12.

Other students like Luisa Cichowski appreciate what they are learning about themselves.

"I learned that I'm interested in different things," she said. "I never thought I would want to do computer design or anything like that. Well now I'm interested in that."

Nolan Windham, 11, seems to appreciate how these experiences will help his future.

"We're thinking about how when we take in information, how to process it and how to create information, and how to create media, how to create different things. That's what you are doing in your adult life."
Read how one teacher used games to inspire her high school students. That's in our new Teachers' Lounge blog. Find out more about what the teachers consider rigorous work, how they measure learning and what the purpose of school is according to the students from our colleagues at KQED/MindShift. PBS NewsHour education coverage is part of American Graduate: Let's Make it Happen, a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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Sixth graders ditch traditional lessons to create video game businesses

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It took seven people to create the "Golden Medallion" spy adventure video game and its advertising campaign. They did their own coding, conducted a beta test, created a website, a commercial and an instagram feed, and they came up with incentives to get people to play.

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Test Could Show Effect of Gaming on Child's Brain

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Our "Gma" cover story, a parenting alert about your chilled's brain on fortnite. The game's creator says more than 250 million people are playing it so we're taking a closer look at what -- how it could affect a child's mind. Becky Worley is here. Do we want to know the result. Good morning. Good question. You know, we've seen popular video games before. But fortnite, it just feels like something different. More compelling, more compulsive. But why? We used an fmri to look into a child's brain on fortnite to find out what may make it so tough to stop. 10-year-old cash loves fortnite. He plays every day. His mom says sometimes as much as five hours on weekend days. That he doesn't want to go on play dates because he'd rather play fortnite with friends online and the game is the first thing he thinks about in the morning. He would definitely choose to do fortnite over most things. Is there anything you'd rather do than play fortnite? That's a good question. Um, no. Reporter: He says sometimes he plays so long that -- When you're lightheaded and can't get enough fortnite but it hurts inside. Reporter: It has 250 million players and while it doesn't report hours played daily parents are at wit's end. How much do you think he's spent in game. Thousands. I no longer pay him allowance in dollars but in bucks. They have a recipe to make you want to keep playing. I just killed it. Completing challenges. At the end of those various challenges you level up and earn rewards. Cosmetic items that you can show of. Reporter: To see what happens in his brain when he's playing fortnite we head to the Marcus institute of integrate tiff health at Jefferson health and Andrew Newberg if we'll put a helmet on you. Reporter: He uses an fmri machine. How does it respond to three thing, random visuals with color and motion, a similarly violent video game from a few years back and then to fortnite. So hopefully we'll get a good picture of how these game as feck the brain and alsohow there's a difference between the two different games. Reporter: Cash will do this exercise but as a comparison his schoolmate 12-year-old Amato will go through the same process. One big difference, Amato doesn't play fortnite. It's one of those games where you kill each other and I just -- I am not interested in the game. Reporter: He prefers race car games and reading about sports. Amato watches video of the birds and the older game and then fortnite. I enjoyed the one with the flying birds. You liked the birds better. Sounds good. Nice job. Reporter: Now it's cash's turn in the fmri machine. Not much activity with bird answer the older game but fortnite, Dr. Knewburg says it was a different story than his schoolmate. What lit up? So the area that really lit up is a dopamine area of the brain. Reporter: You can see cash's brain on the left. Amato's on the right. Watching fortnite the doctor said cash's brain had much greater activation than Amato's did in the an tear Yo cingulate. For some it can be associated with addiction. They are involved in our reward system of the brain. Reporter: He says gaming addiction is a real disorder but gaming has also though been proven to improve visual and sparnl awareness and while the reward centers of cash's brain are lit up, none of this is predictive of addictive behaviors. Just because we see a dopamine area lighting up in the gamer we saw today, that doesn't inherently mean that the person has an addiction. What it mines is that it's affecting the areas of the brain that are involved in that. We ultimately have to find out how they're doing as a person. Reporter: Cash by all accounts is doing well in school and in other areas of his life but for his mom even this rough association is scary. How does that make you want to alter or adjust cash's playing because what I witnessed is an incredibly patient, polite, functional kid who is obsessed with fortnite. It's a big deal. I think everything in moderation and I don't know what moderation is with fortnite. Moderation with fortnite. We reached out to the makers of the game but they declined to comment. Dr. Newburg says more research is needed and cash's mom, rusty, has put time limits on his gaming, 30 minutes on school days. No more than three hours each So what is it about this game? What is it about fortnite? Yeah, you know, this game in particular has kids so hooked, right? Many experts that I spoke with say the sophistication of the game is in play. It's really good at random rewards. Think of a slot machine when you play the game, you find loot, weapons, it's like Christmas to there's the social aspect. They talk to their friends plus it's mobile, right? It goes anywhere and everywhere with them. So what should we and parents in particular take away when they see those brain scans of cash? Yeah, I mean, the thing is is he is really dealing with brain chemistry. It's not really about self-regulation at a certain point asking your kids to know when to stop playing is probably unrealistic. You, the parent, need to tell them when it's time to take a break. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Thank you. I mean, I got -- Becky, I know you're a parent. I got to tell you looking at the audience during the piece and they were just going like where is the parents' responsibility in this as well? I mean, you've got to take a little ownership in that, don't you think? It's a tough conversation and parents don't like being the bad guy but this is a place where boundaries are equated to love and care. That's right. Thank you for that, Becky. We appreciate it.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

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Video: Test could show the effect of gaming on your kid's brain

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Our "Gma" cover story, a parenting alert about your chilled's brain on fortnite. The game's creator says more than 250 million people are playing it so we're taking a closer look at what -- how it could affect a child's mind. Becky Worley is here. Do we want to know the result.

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Can Games Help Improve Education?

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Now Teachers Encourage Computer Games in School

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At a private school in Houston, eighth-graders slingshot angry red birds across a video screen for a lesson on Newton's law of motion. High-school students in Los Angeles create the "Zombie Apocalypse" computer game to master character development. And elementary students in Hampstead, N.C., build a virtual city to understand spatial reasoning.

These seemingly playful adventures represent a new frontier in education: videogames as teaching tools. Though it's still a budding movement, scores of teachers nationwide are using games such as "Angry Birds," "Minecraft," "SimCity" and "World of Warcraft" to teach math, science, writing, teamwork and even compassion. In Chicago and New York, entire schools have been created that use the principles of game design in curriculum development.

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Now Teachers Encourage Computer Games in Class

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At a private school in Houston, eighth-graders slingshot angry red birds across a video screen for a lesson on Newton's law of motion. High-school students in Los Angeles create the "Zombie Apocalypse" computer game to master character development. And elementary students in Hampstead, N.C., build a virtual city to understand spatial reasoning.

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Should Video Gaming Be a School Sport?

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Video gaming has pro teams, star players, and millions of fans. Should it be considered a sport?

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Are Video Games Good for You?

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Hooked on Games

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Playing video games can be a fun way to unwind or spend time with friends. In schools, teachers use games like Minecraft to encourage teamwork and critical thinking.

But for some players, gaming is an unhealthy habit. At night, they are glued to a screen. Schoolwork suffers. The video-game world seems a friendlier place than the real one.

Mental health experts have taken notice. In June, the World Health Organization (WHO) added gaming disorder to its list of diseases and health conditions. A person may have the disorder if gaming has damaged his or her relationships with family and friends, and if it has affected his or her daily activities.

Not all experts agree that excessive × excessive BETSIE VAN DER MEER/GETTY IMAGES more than what is usual, proper, or healthy (adjective) My mom drinks excessive amounts of coffee. gaming should be called a disorder. They say people hooked on video games may be suffering from other mental health problems. These should be treated first.

Others think WHO made the right call. Psychiatrist Clifford Sussman treats gaming addiction. He says kids often have feelings of anxiety × anxiety HIGHWAYSTARZ-PHOTOGRAPHY/GETTY IMAGES a feeling of uneasiness or worry (noun) Spelling tests give me anxiety. . They get angry when a parent pries them from a device. "It becomes a self-destructive activity," Sussman told TIME for Kids.

Taking Back Control

What makes video games addictive? Playing excites the brain's reward center. After a while, the brain becomes numb to pleasure. You feel bored without a controller in your hand. So you play even more.

Sussman advises tracking how long you play. He says you should take at least an hour-long break after every hour of play. The brain needs time to recover.

Young gamers who think they might have a problem should ask an adult for help. Sussman suggests you first answer a simple question: "Are you in control, or is the game in control?"

Stop & Think! How does the author address multiple perspectives in the article? Support your answer with evidence from the text.

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Playing video games can be a fun way to unwind or spend time with friends. In schools, teachers use games like Minecraft to encourage teamwork and critical thinking. But for some players, gaming is an unhealthy habit. At night, they...