ESA, HISPANIC HERITAGE FOUNDATION AWARD GRANTS TO INNOVATIVE MINORITY YOUTHS

In December, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation announced the selection of the ESA Leaders on the Fast Track (LOFT) Video Game Innovation Fellows. Twenty minority youths each received a grant to further their development of video games designed to solve social problems in their communities.

On December 4, the Fellows traveled to Washington, D.C. and presented their ideas to influencers and policymakers including Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and White House Senior Advisor for Digital Media Mark DeLoura.

LOFT Video Game Innovation Fellows at a reception in Washington, D.C.

The Fellows were selected based on their games’ vision, creativity, and potential to impact their community. The winning games included a Greek mythological adventure that teaches math to grade school students; a game featuring a hero who fights his way through SAT vocabulary words; and an app that teaches kids how to write by exploring music lyrics and Twitter content. 

For more information on the program, visit www.LOFTinnovation.org and follow LOFT on Facebook and Twitter.

RESEARCH SHOWS VIDEO GAMES COULD IMPROVE AIRPORT SCREENING

Video games could help make airports safer, according to a new report by researchers from Duke University.

Using data from the mobile game Airport Scanner, researchers examined why some Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers are better than others at spotting prohibited items through X-ray machines.

Screenshot from the mobile game Airport Scanner

In the game, players assume the role of a TSA officer and inspect the contents of virtual suitcases. They earn points by correctly identifying luggage that contains items from TSA’s prohibited list, including wine bottles, liquid containers larger than 3.5 ounces, hand guns, and explosives. The game challenges players to find items that travelers often carry, such as small knives and bottles of water, more frequently, but also prompts them to identify rarer items such as bombs.

Upon analyzing game data, the researchers found that while players learned to effectively spot prohibited items that appeared regularly, they failed to catch unusual items that appeared less frequently. The results, they conclude, suggest that TSA officers need to be exposed to a massive number of images of ultra-rare items in order to effectively identify them. The researchers recommended incorporating these learnings into future trainings to enhance officers’ performance.

“High accuracy during visual searches is critical for professionals like TSA officers and radiologists, as any missed target can have life-or-death consequences,” said Stephen Mitroff, a professor at Duke University’s Visual Cognition Laboratory. “It’s vital to understand how people learn these skills best and what factors lead to accurate performance, and the data collected from Airport Scanner enable my team to assess and learn from hundreds of thousands of individuals on accuracy, response time, false alarms, the ability to avoid distraction, the ability to multitask, and more.”

To read the full Duke University report, go to: http://bit.ly/1gEkJDz.

VIDEO GAMES INSPIRE THE NEXT GENERATION OF CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

As our country prepares to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday this month, educational video games are teaching students about the civil rights movement in the U.S. and challenging them to think critically about African American history.

Educational game publisher EverFi’s 306 – African-American History engages students in the long history of civil rights – from the Underground Railroad to Brown v. Board of Education and the freedom rides. In the game, players navigate a series of interactive historical vignettes, engage in simulated interviews with key historical figures including Harriet Tubman and Althea Gibson, and answer questions about historical speeches. The game also includes classroom coursework aligned to the Common Core State Standards for writing and literacy in history and social studies, and concludes with a capstone activity that requires students to write a short analytical essay.

Screenshot from EverFi’s 306 – African-American History

EverFi CEO Tom Davidson said the game seeks to inspire players with the creativity, strength, grit, and determination of major civil rights figures. “Too often Martin Luther King Jr. Day and African American History Month are simply a copied worksheet, a dated video, a school assembly, or a poster on the wall,” he said. “We must do more. Through 306, we want to capture the imagination of a new generation of students – to inspire them with stories… that they can take with them on their own life journey.”  

In addition, the National Civil Rights Museum offers an e-learning platform that features a number of games and other tools to teach young people about civil rights history. In one game, Before the Boycott: Riding the Bus, players take on the role of a school newspaper reporter assigned to ride the Montgomery, Alabama bus system in 1955. Players complete the seven-stop bus ride and are exposed to instances of racial discrimination along the way. For example, players learn that African Americans were required to enter buses from separate rear doors, sit in the back, and move to accommodate white passengers. Players later describe their feelings about the bus tour for an interactive news story.

These and other educational video games expose students to the heroism of important civil rights figures, and inspire them to emulate these heroes’ compassion and perseverance in their own lives.

GAMERS HELP ENHANCE FARMLAND MAPPING, MONITOR GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLY THROUGH PLAY

Video game players around the world are helping real-world farmers classify unidentified cropland and refine existing maps, enabling on-the-ground organizations to better track food harvests.

Cropland Capture, a game launched by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and hosted by the Geo-Wiki Project, challenges players to examine Google Earth images and detect croplands. Players earn points based on how many fields they identify. At the end of the game's six-month tournament, those at the top of the leaderboard will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win prizes such as a brand-new smartphone or tablet device.

Screenshot from IIASA’s Cropland Capture

Within the first week of Cropland Capture’s release, players had identified 65,000 square kilometers of cropland, proving to be just as successful as cropland experts. The IIASA plans to use thousands of data points gathered from game play to improve contemporary satellite cropland maps, which currently feature coarse resolution and limited national data. These enhanced maps will ultimately help organizations better understand global food security, identify yield gaps, and monitor crops affected by droughts.

Cropland Capture adds to a growing genre of crowdsourcing games that aim to solve complex scientific problems. Foldit, a game from researchers at the University of Washington, challenges online gamers to figure out how to fold proteins into their complex 3D forms through a series of 10 puzzles, helping scientists enhance their understanding of protein structures. In addition, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers developed EyeWire, a game in which players must color in 3D images of the retina in order to build a map of neural connections between our eyes and our brains. Both games have been highly successful: Foldit players redesigned an existing protein to increase its efficiency more than eighteenfold and EyeWire players have mapped more than one million 3D neuron cubes.

Cropland Capture and other crowdsourcing games are more than entertainment – they help scientists improve real-life issues such as global health and food security. To play CropLand Capture, visit: http://bit.ly/1cCIpRP.