Get more primary software tips to help you choose the best software for your child at http://www.educationalgamer.com . You can also get children’s educational software recommendations from a home-school mom.
The PC is one of the most important tools a child can learn in their primary years. While console games teach hand eye coordination and problem solving skills educational pc games teach both these skills as well as keyboard recognition and mouse control both essential skills for 90% of employable professions.
In educational PC games the emphasis is on supporting the child to learn a particular curriculum based subject or, more often, a range of skills applicable to the child's age and grade level. Learning is undertaken via visual and audio cues including animation, video, music and audio narration. These elements work together in a well researched and developed game to produce an engaging environment for the child to learn in. They "want" to play the game because it is so much "fun", all the while their interaction with the program is developing brain muscles that challenge in an entertaining way.
Educational PC games differ from console games in that they generally require the child to respond to requests for information by using either the mouse or the keyboard. Where in console based games input is directed through the specially designed hand-held controller, in educational PC games the child has to use a keyboard and mouse to respond to requests for information from the software.
This word-based focus develops not only hand eye coordination but also larger literacy and grammatical based skills. Console games are great for hand eye co-ordination but not so for challenging and expanding the ability to communicate broader linguistic skills.
The console gaming industry is changing rapidly. Revolutionary consoles such as Nintendo's Wii system have transformed the way people interact with computers, becoming more interactive and dynamic than ever before. Nevertheless the basic skills of typing, keyboard recognition and mouse manipulation remain the predominant way we communicate complex ideas to one another.
Children who are comfortable in that environment are bound to succeed in whatever future evolutionary direction humans and their computers take.
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