I hate the feeling I get when my kids watch TV. When I see them slumped there, zombied out in front of the screen it's so hard not to feel guilty. I should be doing more to get them out of the house. Pump them full of fresh air. I imagine many parents feel the same.
So I wasn't sure how to greet the news that Xbox are making a big push into the educational market with their new 'playful learning' range of Kinect titles aimed at 4-10 year olds. Of course I could see the huge potential that the Kinect's controller-free interface might have to encourage kids to use their bodies and motor skills to engage with subjects. But the guilty parent in me couldn't help but worry -- might this just another way for us to abdicate responsibility, to plonk our kids in front of a screen and tell ourselves that were doing our job? It's ok, i tell myself. It's educational.
Needless to say on arriving at the press launch this week in New York my built-in British skepticism was turned up to eleven. Could this be really be 'education' or was it really 'edu-tainment'? As I sat there waiting for the presentation to begin the voice of a member of Lady Geek's influential mum panel rang loudly in my ears: 'At the end of the day, I want my children to be climbing trees not playing on an Xbox.'
But then something surprising happened. As the scarily passionate Microsoft team began to show off the new titles, I could feel that, in spite of myself, I was softening. The Kinect really is a wonderful piece of kit which is intuitive and immersive, and the new games take full advantage of its technology. As I watched the demonstrator and her child enthusiastically navigate round a virtual Sesame Street with a series of wonderfully fluid physical gestures, I was amazed when they both appeared within the game itself. I couldn't help but think that what I might be looking at was the future of learning.
It can be easy to dismiss something as bad for our kids because it involves staring at a screen. All parents do it, and it's impossible to shake off our natural prejudices that children should be outside hopscotching and bike riding and scraping knees as if it was a Beverly Cleary book and a stash of hidden pirate gold depended on it. But we have to embrace the fact that our children are being raised in a brave new technology age and my 3 year old daughter similar to the baby in the video, thinks a traditional magazine is a broken iPad.