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Project Title: Too Much Gaming?

Mission:

How can we raise awareness about the positive and negative impact of video games?

Culminating / Take Action Project

Create a news story that reports on a positive or negative impact of video games.

What Kids Learn

Kids love video games, but are they good for us? In Too Much Gaming, kids learn all about video games and decide if games are good or bad for us. Kids learn all about how our brains process information from video games by exploring how our nervous system works and responds to games. Kids also explore the science of light, including how we perceive it and how it is processed in our brains. Finally, kids explore how game designers use patterns of information and coding to create video games and transmit information.  

 

After learning about how games utilize light and patterns to send signals to our brains, kids explore the pros and cons of gaming, including how games can promote critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork, as well as how excessive gaming can lead to isolation and unhealthy habits. Too Much Gaming culminates when students produce a news story to teach others about video games. They can either create a story that highlights the benefits of gaming or showcases some of its pitfalls. 

Overview

Life Habit Focus: Impact Awareness

Subject: Earth Science, ELA

Grade: 3-5

Topic: Light, how light travels, information transfer, how the brain processes information and how games are designed.

Project preview

Project Materials

Project Module

Student Notebook

Teacher's Guide

Materials List

Virtual Field Trips

One of our goals is to help kids connect what they are learning in our projects to the real world beyond the classroom. To do that, we’ve partnered with experts to help students learn from and virtually visit with experts from around the world. The Too Much Gaming project partners with:

Professor Lindsay Grace

In this module, students meet video game designer and Professor Lindsay Grace.  Professor Grace, from the University of Miami, teaches students about how video games are designed and about the pros and cons of video gaming. 

Ramy Inocencio

In their Take Action Project, students meet CBS News Senior Correspondent Ramy Inocencio. Ramy teaches students all about what it’s like to be a reporter and how to create a compelling news story that hooks the viewer, shares key information, leverages visuals, and inspires others to take action. 

Aligned Standards

Common Core Reading (CCSS):

  • Informational/Nonfiction Standards R.I. 1-10 for grades 3-5
  • Reading Literacy Standard L. 5 & 6 for grades 3-5
  • Writing Standards W. 1,4,5 for grades 3-5
  • Listening and Speaking Standards SL. 1-6 for grades 3-5

NGSS Standards:

Performance Expectations (PE):

  • 4-LS1-2: Use a model to describe that animals receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways.
  • 4-PS4-3 Generate and compare multiple solutions that use patterns to transfer information.*
  • 4-PS4-2 Develop a model to describe that light reflecting from objects and entering the eye allows objects to be seen.

Science and Engineering Practices (SEP): 

  • Use a model to test interactions concerning the functioning of a natural system. 
  • Generate and compare multiple solutions to a problem based on how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the design solution. 
  • Develop a model to describe phenomena.

Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI):

  • LS1.D: Information Processing:  Different sense receptors are specialized for particular kinds of information, which may be then processed by the animal’s brain. Animals are able to use their perceptions and memories to guide their actions.
  • PS4.C: Information Technologies and Instrumentation: Digitized information can be transmitted over long distances without significant degradation. High-tech devices, such as computers or cellphones, can receive and decode information-convert it from to voice-and vice versa.
  • ETS1C: Optimizing The Design Solution: Different solutions need to be tested in order to determine which of them best solves the problem, given the criteria and the constraints (secondary)  
  • PS4.B: Electromagnetic Radiation: An object can be seen when light reflected from its surface enters the eyes. 

Crosscutting Concepts (CC):

  • A system can be described in terms of its components and their interactions. 
  • Similarities and differences in patterns can be used to sort and classify designed products.
  • Cause and effect relationships are routinely identified.
  •  

Course Content

Module 1: Your Mission
1.1 You Mission: Too Much Gaming?
1.2 Turn That Off
1.3 Gaming Impact
Module 2: Life Habit Impact Awareness
2.1 Actions = Impact
2.2 Dopa-What?
2.3 Influence
Module 3A: Video Games and Our Brain
3.1 Gaming Key Words
3.2 Our Brain, Our Senses
3.3 Making SENSE of Things
3.4 Don’t Be Nervous
3.5 Seeing Games, Traveling Light
3.6 How Light Travels
3.7 Seeing Color
3.8 Into Our Brains
Module 3B: Game Design
3.9 Secret Code
3.10 Pixels and Patterns
3.11 Meet a Game Designer
3.12 How Games Are Designed
3.13 Game Strategies
Module 3C: The Pros and Cons of Gaming
3.14 Cons: How Much is Too Much?
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