Using Video Games for Good Works
Just this morning, I learned that students from Champlain College's Emergent Media Center are traveling around South Africa thanks to a $600,000 grant from the United Nations Population Fund. The cash enables them to research and create a video game that would educate kids about violence against women. Check out their blog here.
Or, better yet, talk with some of them next weekend at their cool Art Hop installation. Check next week's Seven Days for details . . .
The Champlain project, incidentally, reminds me of another one by Albert "Skip" Rizzo, a therapist and virtual reality designer at the University of Southern California. Rizzo is using the Xbox game "Full Spectrum Warrior" to help soldiers returning from Iraq deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Ripton writer Sue Halpern, who recently wrote about Rizzo's project in the New Yorker and published a book about "memory research," explains her story in this New Yorker video segment.
I would be interested know what the PTSD Xbox game entails... one of my Veteran friends went to a PTSD "therapy" session which, in the end, consisted of strapping on a virtual reality helmet and reliving his combat days in Iraq. The idea was that it would desensitize him to certain PTSD triggers. He called bullshit and moved on to other types of therapy.
Posted by: bridgetb | August 28, 2008 at 01:29 PM