MTV has been active in encouraging younger voters to get to the polls for well over 20 years. In 1992 they brought the “Choose or Lose” campaign to the airwaves, and in the decades since they have frequently partnered with nonprofit Rock the Vote to air initiatives encouraging 18-24 year-old voters to get to the polls and engage with the democratic process.
We know video games are big in pop culture: millions of us, of all ages, play them every day. We know they’re big in business: the video game industry in the United States alone is worth over $US25 billion annually, to say nothing of the rest of the world. And it seems that the United States government knows how big a deal they are, too.
New game designer Hannah Wyman won a trip to New York, got a grant for her school, educated kids, and met the President of the United States. And she managed it all around her dance lessons and her homework, because she’s eleven years old.
“I’m running tonight.” Video games take us places; this is known. They allow us to try on identities other than our own, and to see what it’s like to live life as another person. They can also teach us things. maths and science teachers have spent a good amount of time figuring out how to leverage games to better instruct their students, but role-playing and adventure games have always seemed particularly well-suited to teaching history.
Nintendo is teaming with The National Association for Music Education to get the Wii and Wii Music into schools, the two announced today.