Computer Game Saves Children From Landmine Scourge

Professor Frank Biocca, one of the game's developers, holds a One Laptop Per Child Computer during his recent trip to assess the game's effect on learning about the dangers of landmines (File, VOA-R. Carmichael)

Allen Tan, a former US bomb disposal expert and now regional head of the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, helps one of the children at a Phnom Penh orphanage with the landmine game, June 2010 (Photo: VOA - R. Carmichael)

Robert Carmichael, VOA
Phnom Penh
24 June 2010

Decades of war have left Cambodia with millions of landmines and unexploded ordnance that kill and injure hundreds each year. A new approach to educating children about mines was tested last week in Phnom Penh, and is likely to be rolled out to other nations in the coming years.

There is nothing unusual about children clustered around a computer screen, one of them playing a game, the others giving suggestions.

But at this Phnom Penh orphanage, the game they are playing is unique.

This is what its developers call a "serious" game - one that is designed to educate. The children are having fun while learning how to recognize the danger signs for landmines and bombs in a typically Cambodian landscape.

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