News from the CEPA e-mail list

Computer games with a focus on the environment (16/04/07)

Good afternoon everyone:

As some of you will be aware, Countdown 2010 is a powerful network of active partners working together, largely in Europe, towards the 2010 biodiversity target. On their web site you will find much of general interest on the 2010 target but I thought I would draw your attention in particular to a few pages of their web site that deals with computer games as a tool to educate children about biodiversity and the global 2010 biodiversity target.

The best starting point is probably here http://countdown2010.net/games/tool.html to introduce the topic. Then here http://countdown2010.net/games/kids.html you will references to a study done on 6-13 year olds. It’s a bit hard to be sure but I believe this was a study carried out in Germany so the statistics quoted will perhaps have limited relevance in many countries/continents but the general overview of the world of computer games makes quite interesting reading. Finally, the survey team went on to review 70 available environmental computer games and gave detailed reviews of their top ten list - find it all here http://countdown2010.net/games/index.html.

And finally, finally, I have been meaning to tell everyone about an online game called “The BioDaVersity Code” which you can view here http://www.daversitycode.com/. I have tried without success to get this to work but I strongly suspect it needs a level of Flash software that I do not have – other colleagues tell me it works well!

Best wishes, Sandra Hails, Ramsar Secretariat

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Sandra Hails, CEPA Programme Officer
Ramsar Convention Secretariat
Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 999 0176; Fax: +41 22 999 0169
E-mail: hails@ramsar.org
Web Site: http://ramsar.org
CEPA mini-Web site: http://ramsar.org/outreach_index.htm

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