LearningWorks for Kids

Michael Phelps, Executive Function, and the Love of Video Games

Michael Phelps has recently become the poster child for a generation of teenage girls and, perhaps more importantly, for the millions of boys and girls who have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or who have difficulties with their executive functioning. Michael's mother describes him as displaying many of the signs of a young man who has difficulties with executive functions, which represent the core components of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders. Individuals who have difficulties with executive functions may have problems in sustaining their attention, behavioral self-control, regulating their emotions, managing their time, and persevering on tasks. In Michael Phelps' case, his mother notes that he "never sat still, never closed his mouth, and was always asking questions and always jumping from one thing to another." Difficulties in regulating his frustration as a younger child after losing a swim meet and, at times, difficulty in planning such as a decision not to study for the written portion of his driver's test have been reported.

Michael's difficulties as a youngster are captured in a misguided, but all-too-common conversation that his mother reported with his kindergarten teacher. His teacher said, "Michael can't sit still, can't be quiet. Michael can't focus," to which his mother said, "Maybe he's bored." His teacher then said, "He's not gifted. Your son will never be able to focus on anything." Unfortunately, this negative attitude is pervasive among many educators, parents, and the kids who have executive-functioning difficulties. This leads to a sense of negativity, repeated experiences with failure, and, most often, a sense of frustration in traditional academic settings.

Through the wisdom of his parents and the good fortune to find a place where he could channel his interests and strengths, Michael Phelps has become a model for young people who have difficulties with attentional issues and executive functioning. While most of these individuals may not have the extraordinary set of skills that have led Michael to 14 gold medals, they all have their unique sets of interests and strengths that can be nurtured, although perhaps not in a traditional school setting.

Michael and his family and coaches were able to find those opportunities that empowered, rather than diminished, him. For his example, his mother reports that the regularity of swimming practice created time-management strategies in which things needed to be done sequentially and in a regimented fashion. Michael seemed to respond well and persisted when challenged in the athletic setting. Even in the area of reading, which Michael did not like as a child, his mother would give him the sports section of the paper or books about sports to engage his interest. Learning to regulate the intensity of his emotions has served to enhance his competitiveness and to channel his energy.

In addition to all of Michael's personal attributes and the support of his family and coaches, a very simple observation can be made, as well. Michael took to swimming like a fish takes to water. In simpler terms, he was able to find an area of interest where he could direct his skills. All too often, we find ourselves doing a disservice to children with Executive Functioning Disorders and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder by limiting them to the narrow curriculum of a traditional school setting and not allowing them to use their energies in something that is a better fit.

Michael's mother reports that another area in which he is able to sustain his attention for long periods of time involves screen-based activities. Whether this includes watching movies on his large-screen plasma television; playing video games non-stop; or watching tapes of his competitors over and over, essentially doing his swimming homework, he is described as intensely focused on electronic media.

Michael reportedly loves video games. In fact, he reportedly had a shoulder injury after playing so much Tiger Woods PGA Golf Tour on the Wii that his coach forbade him to play any further.

Many parents of youngsters with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and executive-functioning difficulties have voiced similar observations about their children's engagement with television and video and computer games. Strategies to set effective limits on children's amount of screen time, yet at the same time use it in a more productive fashion, would be helpful for many of these youngsters.

Developing new methods to assist children in combining exercise with video-game viewing might be helpful. A number of companies have recently produced exercise bikes that mimic video racing games. Recent data suggest that children who play sports-based video games are more likely to engage in these types of sports in the outside world than their non-video game playing peers. Strategies such as using video-game time as a reward for physical activity; requiring that a significant proportion of video-game play be movement-based, such as using the Nintendo Wii exercise games; and the development of video games that encourage physical activity in the same way that brain-training games encourage mental development will help many children become physically fit and better able to regulate their behavior.

 

 

Practice Makes Perfect Blog

My son Ethan, age 13-1/2, is a natural athlete.  Whether it be as a pitcher on his baseball team or a point guard on his basketball team, his skills and competitiveness stand out (and not only to his father). I have often told Ethan that his combination of competitiveness, coordination, anticipation, quickness, and length are ideal for playing tennis, and I believe that this could ultimately be his best sport. However, unlike other sports, Ethan did not pick up tennis naturally. Even though we played, he did not appear to make many improvements, and often both he and I would be frustrated when we played together. 

As part of the LearningWorks project, my children had the luxury of having all the latest video game consoles, so during the Summer Ethan began playing Wii Sports.  He tried to convince me to let him play for extended periods, because it was “exercise,” and that he didn’t need to go outside and run around.  I did notice that he often played in the practice modes of the Wii Sports games rather than in the game-playing modes.  In these practice modes, the game player works on refining specific skills that would be useful in the game.   

One rainy week in particular, Ethan played a great deal of Wii Tennis. Shortly thereafter, we went out to play tennis again.  We started hitting, and all of a sudden, Ethan had a two-fisted backhand with topspin that he could rifle over the net.  This was a stroke that he had never hit before, but now he was hitting with a degree of regularity, excellent pace, and often even with placement.  I laughingly said to him, “Who have you been playing tennis with?” to which he responded that he hadn’t played since we had last played.  We both joked about how it must have been playing on the Nintendo that made him better.

Well, as we have continued to play over the Summer (and also far more frequently, because Ethan wants to play on an almost daily basis now), I began to believe more and more that Ethan had arrived at a “virtual tennis stroke” that was effective in the Wii Sports game, and also in the real world.   

I want to emphasize that I don’t think that playing Wii Sports or any other type of video game requiring movement, such as Dance Dance Revolution or Tiger Woods Golf, is a substitute for the real thing.  However, I do believe that there may be benefits to playing these activity-based video games.  For example, Dance Dance Revolution requires processing of visual information that studies have suggested may help with reading comprehension and certainly may also provide a degree of exercise that might serve to reduce stress.

So this has got me thinking. While I’m not much of a golfer, I wonder if I play enough Tiger Woods Golf, will I actually get better . . .

Game Shows as an Instructional Tool

Finding methods to make learning more engaging and interactive is an ongoing challenge for parents and teachers. Yamin Gamin and Missy Covington of LearningWare describe their strategies for using a game show format as a tool for teaching everything from corporate policies to history about the American Revolution. They point out that game shows work because people like to compete, almost everyone is familiar with the game show format, and game shows appeal to all learning styles. They report that “visual learners see the questions surrounding information; auditory learners learn to hear the question and discuss answers; and kinesthetic learners learn to ring in, cheer, and participate.”

Many of the same characteristics can be seen in the digital technologies that LearningWorks selects for teaching both content and thinking skills. The challenges and competition of games, formats which children have become very familiar with, and the multi-modal presentation of new material and feedback are key ingredients.

Gamin and Covington suggest using game shows in three basic ways: previewing information, reviewing information, and as an “energizing event.” Similarly, many digital games and learning programs are set up in a manner in which new information or problems are presented, the player needs to try out possible solutions and after a while is able to succeed, often later reviewing and using the same strategies in future sections of the game. The game-playing experience or “engamement” serves to energize the learning experience.

By the way, watching a television game show with your kids might also prove to be a wonderful learning opportunity. Playing a game such as Wheel of Fortune, where both you and your child can guess at which letters are missing, provide your rationale for choosing letters, and discuss your methods of guessing at possible answers, requires executive function skills such as planning and metacognition. Many of the game shows, such as Jeopardy or Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?, provide an opportunity to learn content and further discuss topics, introduce new vocabulary, and demonstrate problem-solving techniques to your kids.

Becoming a Better Quarterback

Football requires size, speed, and strength. Savvy and smarts often differentiate the good players from the great ones. Intelligence and efficient decision making has become a major demand for individuals who play quarterback on high school, college, and professional football teams. As football defenses become more complex and unpredictable, quarterbacks need to learn to make very quick decisions, basing them upon their film study and experiences from the past, as well as what they observe in the current situation.

An article in the Wall Street Journal by John Weinbach describes a number of digital technologies that are being used to enhance skills in college quarterbacks. For example, the Maryland football team reportedly invested more than $50,000 in a video game system to help quarterbacks master the team’s playbook. The University of Arizona has a studio where players compete against “life-size, computer-generated opponents.”

As offenses become more complex, quarterbacks will need to recall dozens of plays with a myriad of nuances. This task requires strengths in long-term memory, much of which can come from film study. But it also requires working memory that helps the quarterback simultaneously access long-term memory, observe and remember the current defensive formation, and make a decision while keeping those other things in mind. It would seem that quarterbacks who have significant working-memory strengths may have an advantage in this type of situation.

Cogmed, Inc., which provides working-memory training for children and adults, had discussed conducting research in this area. The hypothesis is that working-memory training will help a quarterback process the multiple pieces of information that he needs to access while in the act of coordinating a play. In a football culture where the best quarterbacks, such as Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, are known not only for their physical skills but also for their cerebral attributes, it is unsurprising that tools that aid in decision making would be helpful to these athletes. A question to be posed is, if working-memory training is helpful to individuals playing the quarterback position, might it also serve other athletes, such as football offensive linemen or point guards on a basketball team, where cognition and awareness of past and current situations play a significant role beyond simple athletic ability and reaction time. Neurotechnologies such as Cogmed Working Memory training hold the promise that we can use digital technologies to serve children in the classroom, playing fields, and social areas in their lives. A willingness to be creative is all we need.

How Much is 2 Much?

Parents of teenagers often find themselves in a battle to get on the computer in the early evening hours (ostensibly when their kids are supposed to be doing their homework). What they often find, in fact, is that children are instant messaging their friends, often “talking” to half a dozen or more at the same time. After instant messaging their friends, they need to check their MySpace or FaceBook page, and those of their many “friends.” In between their stints on the computer (when you finally get your chance), they have taken out their cell phones and are text messaging their “best friends,” using a language that is unknown to much of the adult population.

Here’s the good news. Kids are talking to their friends, engaging in a larger social network, and, hopefully, supporting these cyber-based connections with real face-to-face communication and interaction. Believe it or not, they are also practicing their language skills, as instant messaging and texting both have very distinctive sets of rules of spelling, communication, and meaning.

How is a parent to set limits on his/her child’s communication with others? By the way, we probably should include that old fashioned method of communication, the landline-based telephone, into the discussion, as well. Here are a couple of suggestions that fit pretty much with my concept of what LearningWorks calls a “play diet.” Essentially, take care of your basic educational and psychosocail needs (in this case, a healthy combination of school, chores, physical activity, and face-to-face social interaction), prove you can be responsible with this, and then you’re on your own. I would suggest that this strategy applies to mid-adolescents and up.

Other strategies can certainly be useful in restricting the overall amount of time spent in these activities. For example, I strongly discourage the practice of children having televisions, computers, or video games in their bedrooms. This allows parental observation of your child’s screen time. Secondly, prioritize computer use so that if the parent has business to do on the computer and a child is simply talking to his/her friends, he/she understands that he/she will be asked to and expected to get off immediately.

In many homes now, there is more than one computer, so this does not become an issue. Restrictions on time to get off the computer can certainly be helpful. Just as in many homes phone calls are discouraged after 9 p.m., a similar type of strategy can be used for instant and text messaging. Finances can also play a role. Rather than paying for unlimited texting for your child’s cell phone, have a moderate limit (to those of you who don’t text, this will not appear to be modest) of 250 texts per month. Any overage is paid for by the child, which it gets expensive.

There are a number of benefits to children’s modern communications. It is far easier for them to check on homework that they may not understand or to make plans for activities with their peers. It may help initiate friendships that might not otherwise have an opportunity to flourish, and it simply allows friends to keep in touch with each other better. All in all, be happy if your kids are communicating. Try to get in on it by texting or IMing them, maybe even to remind them that they have homework to do!

Lovin' Books, Lovin' TV

My 18-year-old son Seth is a very bright and capable student who has always done very well in school. As a younger child, he shared my love for and fascination with books and reading. However as he got older, he read books as needed, choosing to spend more time playing sports or occasionally picking up a magazine to read.

Over the past year, I have observed an interesting transformation in Seth’s interest in books that has coincided with our purchase of a high definition television. Seth has begun regularly to watch high definition programming of nature shows and particularly has enjoyed the Planet Earth series on The Discovery Channel, as well as other programming about nature and animals on PBS. Once he began watching these shows, Seth decided to start looking at my large collection of coffee table books on nature, animals in the wild, and the ocean. I have watched him spend hours at a time turning from page to page looking at incredible pictures of animals, landscapes, and the ocean. He engages in conversations with his friends about what he is looking at and reading and often searches on the Internet to learn more about these animals or asks me to expand our library of nature books.

For children who struggle with reading and learning, getting them to love books, while at the same time having a multi-modal approach to learning, is very important. Kids are natural learners. Those who struggle with reading, paying attention, or writing simply need other methods to encourage their learning. Using highly stimulating, colorful, and engaging television shows to ignite your child’s learning is available by simply sitting on the couch next to him/her and being willing to take the time to watch and talk.Many of the better educational shows available on television capture children’s interest and encourage them to want to know more. Watching with your child is an opportunity to review the content and the vocabulary that is used in the television show. Enhancing vocabulary and work skills leads to better sight-word reading and comprehension. It begets an opportunity to go to the library and pick up books, preferably those with a focus on pictures, rather than words, and to help the child feel better about him/herself as a learner.

In the LearningWorks section of Other Tools, we provided you with educational television shows that are likely to engage your child in the learning process. For many of these shows, we have corresponding books, DVDs, and websites that might further encourage your child’s learning. While we are not suggesting that parents use television as a child’s primary source of education, we encourage you to use it and any other strategies that get your kids excited about learning.

Is More Better?

Nickelodeon, best known by parents and kids for its television network and numerous television shows and cartoons, is in the business of understanding its audience. Their study, Living in a Digital World, which was published in 2006, produced a great deal of data and arrived at a number of interesting conclusions. One of the main conclusions is that technologies have made old skills irrelevant.

For example, map reading is increasingly becoming obsolete. My 20-year-old son Scott, who has what I affectionately refer to as the Gabriel gene, struggles with directions, as did his wonderful grandmother and one of his uncles. Scott, who can look at a piece of complex music and read it as if it were simply the letters of the alphabet, has difficulty reading a map. However, Scott virtually never gets lost, as before he goes anywhere he simply gets on the computer, plugs in his starting and ending locations to MapQuest, and voila, a set of clear directions along with a visual map to guide him on his way. I’m sure when he is somewhat older and no longer relies upon his dad for money in his pocket, he will have a GPS and will listen to a sweet voice telling him where to go.

Other tools, such as word processing programs with spelling and grammatical checking, reduce the need for certain spelling and writing skills. For many people, looking through the “Yellow Pages” is old fashioned due to their ability to go on the Internet or simply dial 411 on a cell phone for information. Going to the library and conducting old-fashioned research is virtually unknown to children growing up in the 21st century.

As throughout history, new technologies replace what were once necessary skills. For example, the invention of the printing press must have put a lot of calligraphers out of business, and the art of beautiful handwriting is no longer valued. While some of these new digital technologies, for example, voice mail systems, which have put many helpful receptionists out of work, may be an anathema to some, they often result in improvements in other areas.

For children with learning, attention, and self-regulatory difficulties, digital technologies are an incredible asset. For kids with learning disabilities such as dysgraphia, whose handwriting may be unrecognizable, keyboards, computers, and word processing can be a godsend. Kids with organizational and memory issues have cell phones and personal digital assistants to help them keep track of things. Kids who have difficulty with mathematical computations can readily use a calculator, often available right on their cell phones.

Having these technologies does not mean that we should stop teaching these skills. However, it certainly allows for us to focus on more complex, higher-order skills, which require an understanding of and fluency in the basic skills, but not necessarily at an expert level. More importantly, for those who struggle to learn the basic skills, these digital technologies serve as a great support and help allow their other capabilities to flourish, rather than having to devote endless hours to drill and skill strategies. Using digital technologies to support basic learning so that kids can spend more time developing their strengths simply is better!