It’s that time of year again in New York City, which means there’s either a huge snow storm brewing or the newest crop of toys can be seen at Toy Fair. After being at the American International Toy Fair for the last three days checking out the latest technology toys, I’ve seen a few noteworthy trends to watch:

• First, there are indeed more technology toys at this year’s show than last year, including technology products coming from traditional toy companies that have not yet played in the technology space
• Plug-and-play devices, which were in great abundance last year, are less noteworthy this year
• Of those few remaining plug-and-play products, the new trend is to make plug-and-play toys that connect to the USB port of your computer instead of a television set
• And finally, guitars will be big business by holiday of 2007

When I go to toy fair I look for two things: technology and learning. Toys that use technology to deliver learning opportunities is what gets me excited about the show. When you think about technology toys and learning, the usual suspects come to mind: Fisher-Price, LeapFrog, and VTech. What was unusual about this year’s toy fair is that LeapFrog was nowhere to be found. They did not exhibit at the show. None-the-less, new products were announced by all. Over the next few days I will describe some of the highlights within tech toys, as well as a few other surprises in the coming days, but today… let’s start with just the guitars:

I Can Play Guitar by Fisher-Price
Following on the success of I Can Play Piano, the TOTY (Toy of the Year) nominated product that helps kids learn to play the piano, Fisher-Price has released this new product to help kids learn to play guitar. I Can Play Piano has a wonderful method for teaching how to site read music and translate that knowledge to keyboard playing. I didn’t have the opportunity to play with the new I Can Play Guitar product first hand, but look forward to seeing it’s instructive solution. This was one of the few TV plug-and-play products at the show and the only new guitar product that uses a screen. It’s intended for kids ages 5 and up.

Power Tour Electric Guitar by Hasbro
This technology toy is not intentionally positioned as a learning product, but it’s bound to influence kids to want to play guitar. This electronic toy teaches kids how to play 12 different songs but also allows an MP3 player to be hooked up to the guitar as well to play along with your favorite tunes. Lights on the fretboard appear to let the user know where to place their fingers. The device also has audio in and out ports. Hasbro worked with the guitar maker Gibson to make this product. Hasbro believes this toy will have a strong appeal to tweens.

Learn & Groove Animal Sounds Guitar by LeapFrog
This digital guitar, complete with whammy bar and buttons on it’s fret. It not only allows for musical exploration but also introduces numbers, letters, and animals in both English or Spanish. It’s suggested use is for infants and toddlers ages 12 to 36 months.

Electric Rockerz Guitar by Zizzle
This guitar is not meant to assist with learning but joins the digital guitar bandwagon. This product is the smallest and least expensive of the bunch and promotes the sequel to the Disney Channel TV movie High School Musical. It too targets tweens and is part of a collection of electronic toy instruments that will appear on store shelves later this summer.

Jam With Me Electric Guitar by KidDesign Little information is available about this digital toy but what we do know is that it has a slot to plug in an iPod Nano.

While marketers imply these toys are inexpensive ways to introduce guitar playing to kids without the price tag of a real guitar or lessons it’s more likely they’re now appearing as a result of the smash success with the video game Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2. The only learning that occurs in these PS2 titles is hand-eye coordination and timing, but after 30 minutes of play with these titles, or maybe with these new guitar toys, you too will want to brush the dust off of your Mel Bay guitar instruction books!

Next up, I’ll take a look at more non-musical plug-and-play products debuted at Toy Fair.

Nickelodeon recently released a new study that looks into technology use by kids ages 8 – 14 and parents of kids ages 0 – 14. This new report called The Digital Family is mentioned as a follow-up to an earlier Nickelodeon report released in 2006 called Living in a Digital World which cited that 86% of kids ages 8 – 14 are playing video games online. While this earlier report has some very interesting findings about kids and video game, television, instant messaging and chat room use, the publicly available findings are not necessarily data rich. However, this new report is chock-full of great stats, providing excellent insight into Internet, cell phone, television and MP3 player use.

Among the key findings in this study, kids, as well as parents, report:

• a decline in the use of and a reliance on newspapers, maps, and dictionaries because of the availability of information found on the Internet
• a decline in radio listening as a result of MP3 players
• a continuing and growing interest in TV viewing and use of TV as a means to relax and unwind
• a declining interest in purchasing of music albums and CDs
• safety and piece-of-mind from owning a cell phone
• the empowering, creative, and educational benefits of having access to the Internet
• parents using the Internet over 33 hours a month and kids using the Internet more than 19 hours a month
• parents being just as tech savvy or even more so than their children

What this report calls into question is:

• older incorrect assumptions about digital media use and digital media consumption by kids and adults
• shifting perceptions about what is “important knowledge”
• traditional school skills being outdated
• the value of older print-based media and radio
• traditional music and information distribution method
• incorrect perceptions about parents ability to keep up with kids when it comes to technology

Technology and the Internet continue to change the world of kids as well as parents in amazing ways. And surprisingly television looks like it will be the only older media format to have ongoing staying power for young and old. But if there’s one thing you can rely on as a result of this study’s findings is that more change in our future… change with how technology will impact media consumption, communication, learning, family dynamics and wider social interactions. Assumptions about the way things have always been are being challenged in a significant way. The rules of child engagement are being rewritten right before our very eyes.

To read the full Nickelodeon Press release, and see the wealth of stats, click here.

What makes a good learning game for classroom use? This is the question I was recently asked by a coworker. It’s a good question, and one that immediately brings up other questions… What is a good learning game and what should a learning game include (or not include)? What considerations are necessary? How should it be developed? What should a developer be aware of? Each question is as important as the first. There are so many different paths you can take when building a learning game. Where do you begin?

During a recent conversation with researcher Carrie Heeter, professor at the Michigan State University GEL Lab (Games for Entertainment and Learning), she shared with me the results of a project she and her colleague, Brian Winn, had recently completed. This study was called Implications of Gender, Player Type, and Learning Strategies for the Design of Games for Learning and it proved to be an excellent resource for answering our classroom learning game question.

When you think of a good video game, what kind of experience is delivered to the end-user? Most likely one that is challenging, fun, and engaging. But what about a learning game? Certainly these experiences should also occur in a learning game, but if learning is the desired outcome, the planning process of such a game might benefit from a slightly different perspective than that of a game whose intent is not specifically learning related. With the end result in mind, this research report defines four very specific characteristics for consideration in the development of all learning games. When developing a learning game for classroom use the development effort should result in a product that:

• strongly engages both girls and boys
• accommodates diverse play style preferences
• provides support where needed for learners with limited gaming experience; and
• results in deep learning through play

Let’s consider these items as the “Essential Requirements” for developing any classroom learning game.

Next, in the gaming world there are many different game mechanics to engage a user in a game and, depending on how those game mechanics are used, can make a game more enjoyable. Game mechanics can be thought of as a kind of carrot used to drive the player’s game experience. Game mechanics can also be emphasized (or minimized) through different reward structures. Some common game mechanics include things like:

• finding or collecting items of value
• eliminating or minimizing items that are considered a threat
• beating an opponent
• beating your best performance
• achieving the highest score
• beating the clock

As interest in learning games has grown over the last few years, it’s funny to see how these and other age-old game mechanics are incorporated into classroom games without much consideration, resulting in outcomes that unintentionally put certain audience members at a disadvantage. Two different studies cited in this research bring this game mechanic mismatch to light.

The first is by Maria Klawe and her colleagues (Klawe, Inkpen, Phillips, Upitis, & Rubin, 2002). Klawe observed 10, 000 children playing video and computer games at the Science World museum in Vancouver with the Electronic Games for Education in Math and Science group (E-GEMS). What these observations discovered is that boys tend to exhibit a greater interest in completing or winning a game in the shortest time possible. Girls on the other hand were much more interested in exploring through a game.

Brenda Laurel (2001) also describes similar findings. Laurel notes that boys will tend to rush through a game in an effort to beat it, whereas girls are more likely to take their time and explore. What these observations suggest is time-based games, or a “beat the clock” game mechanic, favors a masculine play style, whereas exploration favors a feminine play style.

Therefore, creating a game that rewards speedy play will benefit boys and place girls at a disadvantage. This may be fine for creating a consumer game targeting a niche audience of users, but when it comes to creating learning successes for everyone in a classroom setting, relying on speedy play results in gender inequalities (see Essential Requirements #1). One would also assume a game that relies on exploration as a main game mechanic would benefit girls over boys — or would it?

A major component of this study involved the development of a web-based learning game called Life Preserver (LP) to be played by middle and high school students. This game’s focus was to teach national science standards related to evolution. Many iterations of this game’s design were built and tested to balance out interests of creating a good game with that of making sure the game was pedagogically solid and real learning was taking place. This iteration process also tested to make sure both male and female players were equally successful in the game’s outcome. (For more information on this iteration process read the article Resolving Conflicts in Educational Game Design Through Playtesting, written by the same researchers.)

As the LP game development neared completion, three different versions of the final game were created to test with middle school students. Here I will compare only two of these versions. One version of the final LP game incorporated a reward structure that encouraged speedy play. The other rewarded users for exploration.

As one could predict based on the gender play preferences described earlier, girls took longer to play the speedy version of the LP game than boys, but girls did play faster than they naturally would. When exploration was rewarded in the other version of the game, boys slowed down and explored more content.

But how well did the students perform? Which version produced the greatest learning? In the speedy play mode both girls and boys made mistakes, but girls made more mistakes than boys. In the exploration version of the LP game girls scored better than they did in the speedy version, but boys also scored better than they did in the speedy play version of LP. This suggests that while the natural play pattern for boys is to race through a game, boys will focus more on content in an exploration mode and both girls and boys will perform better where exploration is rewarded.

Surveys were conducted after each group completed playing their assigned games and were then compared. Assumptions could be made that boys would find the speed play mode more fun than the exploration version. Similarly, girls would find the exploration version more fun that the speed play mode. However, the results of the survey showed no difference in enjoyment in one mode versus another. There were no significant differences found in how fun a game was for either boys or girls in any mode of play.

This research will appear as a chapter in the upcoming book From Barbie to Mortal Combat: New Perspectives on Gender, Games, and Computing. This book will also investigate other issues related to gender and technology and is scheduled to be released sometime in 2007 by MIT Press.

Nickelodeon and MTV recently announced their findings from their Wellbeing Study of kids and young people across the globe. The study looks at differences and similarities with today’s youth across fourteen different countries. The data collected in this study reveals noteworthy differences between developing nations (Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa) and developed nations (Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, UK, US). This study groups its participants into two major demographics; kids ages 8 – 15 and young people ages 16 – 34. Removing the research findings for young people to focus just on the findings for kids the following observations appear…

Experiences that all kids share:

• Kids are growing up younger and appear to be experiencing higher levels of stress in their daily lives
• Kids across all ages and in every country feel pressure to succeed
• In 12 out of the 14 countries surveyed, two thirds of kids said that getting good grades in school was their top priority
• The more news media outlets a nation has, the less safe kids feel regardless of where they come from in the world

Experiences that are different for kids in developing nations versus their counterparts in developed nations:

• Kids in developing nations feel more positive about their future than kids in developed nations. They are also happier and expect to have more fun in their future
• Kids in developing countries expect to earn more than their parents, while kids in developed nations expect to earn less than their parents
• Bullying happens everywhere but it’s generally more of a problem in developed nations than in developing nations
• Kids in the developing world are more patriotic than their counterparts in developed nations

What is noteworthy about this study is how MTV plans to use this research to generate new programs for young people ages 16 – 34. For example, one noteworthy concern for all young people across all nations is the worry about jobs and working. As a result, MTV plans to develop programs specifically for this demographic that demystifies the job market.

What insight is unveiled here for kids ages 8 – 15? What content could be created that would appeal to a broad base of kids everywhere? Certainly creating content that informs kids about media literacy skills and strategies to feel safe in their surroundings. If getting good grades in school is a major concern for all, what content could be created that empowers kids to be better learners? How can you create a lifelong love of learning with this information? While the findings suggest a path for how to make content more relevant, and possibly more appealing to kids, translating that relevance into successful content is the challenge. While the available data is limited, it defines universal issues important to kids and important to include in all new product development.