Ted Henning's Brainmeld Tue, May 17. 2005
In my days at Broderbund software and Cendant software, I witnessed first hand the demise of the edutainment software industry due to market pressures and consolidation. What remains is the vestiges of those companies, and the titles they created years ago, while the developers are gone. As someone at Broderbund said to me one day, "the days of interesting educational tiles like 'Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego' are long gone." It simply costs too much to develop educational titles in a world where consumers expect to pay $10 or less.Ted Henning's latest project is http://www.Brainmeld.org, a site devoted to promoting the use of computer games and simulations in education. I think we can all agree that computer games are a part of life for most kids growing up in the US and Europe, and Ted's Master's thesis and the work of people in the educational research field which inspired him indicates that this isn't the disastrous turn of events many have predicted it to would be. Brainmeld.org supports the premise that some games are actually "educational" in a way both children (and adults for that matter) find entertaining.
