How Artificial Wisdom™ Benefits Children

Children, teenagers and young adults spend hours on end playing video games. While it's important to have fun in our lives, wouldn't it be great if some of that time was spent doing something of lasting value, something that provided some kind of educational benefit. If you agree, then we have good news, because many game designers are already including imaginative educational content in their games.

We don't mean to suggest that popular video games are replacing the classroom, because they are not. However, video games have come a long way over the past two decades, and today, many of the most popular games contain a variety of educational content. The GRADE™ rating system is a tool for parents and others who would like to know which games have that little something extra that can benefit their children or themselves.

Don't expect electronic games to start looking and feeling educational, because that wouldn't work. It would get in the way of the game, it wouldn't be fun, and it would defeat the purpose. After all, how many people read the encyclopedia for fun? Instead, we are taking advantage of the tendency of the mind to notice and remember things, including an educational element placed somewhere in a game, and especially when that game is played for 50 to 100 hours or more. We call it Disguised Education™, because nobody is saying, "look at this and memorize it." It's just there to be observed and absorbed in the brain for future reference.

The example we often use is based upon the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.™ In case you aren't aware of the fact, they are ingeniously named after four famous Renaissance artists. Children who have seen the video games, cartoons or movies immediatley recognize these characters and can easily recite their names. Did anyone ask those children to memorize the names? Of course not. That would be work. Instead, they learned the names effortlessly, as a tidbit of Disguised Education^TM simply because they liked the characters.

We Are Here For You

GRADE will provide ratings on this web site discussing the educational content of popular video games. We will break down that information into useful categories and provide quick reference letter grades for people in a hurry and additional detail for those who want to know a game in depth. While this web site is designed to be useful to everybody, it is especially intended as a tool for parents. Parents should feel free to contact us with comments and suggestions.

P.S. Can you name four great Renaissance artists? I can, and I didn't memorize them.

Leonardo (Leonardo da Vinci)

Michelangelo (Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni)

Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi)

Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio)