Games for change?

Besides being an Elementary Education major I also major in Psychology and I am especially interested in prevention science. This semester I am volunteering in a pre-school, which is a prevention program for at risk students. Being involved with the young students makes me realize how important earlier prevention programs are for students. I have seen a lot of presentations that show programs like Al’s Pals and other programs are implemented in the curriculum for younger students. These students that I work with are lucky that they receive this type of education and attention, but I always think what about the students that are not labeled at risk. What happens to the normal child that can slip through the cracks and don’t get the prevention they need. These prevention programs seem to take a lot of time and energy by the teacher and the students are not always responsive to the programs. So I was thinking during the presentation that we had with Mark Wagner who talked about video games for change. How neat would it be to have students play some video games to foster the qualities that prevention programs promote?

In our technology class we are talking about changing education for the future, learning how to problem solve and deal with issues isn’t on just a school level anymore it’s a larger issue. I realized this after reading Anne Davis blog
Link
about online bullying. I am sure there is probably no substitute for teachers conveying students the importance of respecting others autonomy on and offline, but in a digital age where we are all connected it could be worthwhile to teach acceptance, and respect through video games.