I saw an article about virtual pets in last Sunday's Denver Post which talked a little bit about school bans in the Denver area. The article is titled "teacher's pests: virtual pets a class distraction." Surprisingly, only 6 paragraphs (in an article with roughly 30 paragraphs) talk about virtual pets in schools. Only two school-realteed people were interviewed. The first person said that of the one elementary school, middle school, and high school she talked to in Aurora Public Schools, each had banned virtual pets. The high school doesn't allow pagers and other "electronic gizmos, and this is an electronic gizmo." [Does one school of each type make a good representative sampling? I think not. -- Kirk] A Jefferson County spokeswoman said that virtual pets aren't dangerous enough to be considered for a district-wide ban, but individual schools are discouraging students from bringing their pets to school. One paragraph mentions virtual pets used in a positive light -- some schools are using them in their lifestyles and sex education classes, where an egg or other inanimate object must be cared for by students. The rest of the article talks about what virtual pets are and tells about one 7-year-old girl's experience with her virtual pet.
The article is light on facts (for example, the author calls the manufacturer of Tamagotchi "Banzai" even though she lists their web page as www.bandai.com. She mentions that the girl loses her "Dinky Dino" pet, and replaces it with the similar "Rakuraku Dinokun." They are the SAME product!
Ok, enough complaints about the article. It gives a good description of what virtual pets are all about and maintains a neutral tone (the author doesn't show an opinion on whether virtual pets are good or bad), and most importantly gets the word out about these toys.
I didn't know about the pause button you mentioned, Truman. I think that is a needed feature, although it takes away the element of realism that makes virtual pets interesting.
Kirk |
