Joan Ganz Cooney poses with some of her (and your) friends in New York at the seventh annual gala benefit for Sesame Workshop on May 27, 2009. (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images)

“Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children’s Learning and Health,” a study conducted by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop — with support from the Robert Wood Johnson foundation — found that they are.

In 1966, Cooney wrote a study called “The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education.” That report led to the creation of the Children’s Television Workshop (later Sesame Workshop), producers of “Sesame Street,” “Electric Company,” “3-2-1 Contact” (yes, I remember that show) and more.

The link above will take you to the executive summary of the report. There’s a lot I can’t get into in a blog post, but in brief, the researchers who conducted the study found that three-quarters of kids in the United States play some sort of video game, and games can teach kids academic content and skills, creative activity and how changing one thing in a system can affect related things linked to it.

Though some may argue that kids don’t need to be playing video games because it keeps them from getting any physical activity, the report says that games can improve physical health. In fact, “Game Changer” cites “Dance Dance Revolution” as one physical game that has been adopted by public schools in physical education programs.

The researchers who prepared the report recommend devoting more effort to learning how games can be used to improve learning and health.

I’m positive that some will discount the study because it dares to suggest that video games can be used for teaching purposes, but I know for a fact that public school students as young as kindergarten-age are already using video games as part of the school curriculum. Public libraries are also installing video game consoles as part of efforts to get people involved in their local libraries. I don’t think it’s so far-fetched to say that software developers and publishers can write games with content that offer a learning experience to kids — and even adults.

For more on video games and related technologies, take a look at these links:

How Elmo Works
How Television Works
How Video Game Systems Work