Screens have become an integral part of children's lives and some schools are now integrating them with sport to pique students' interests.
East Gippsland Specialist School installed a Multiball interactive sports wall in its gymnasium in December to improve students' motor skills and encourage them to be more active.
Multiball is a mixed reality sports and gaming platform that allows participants to play a variety of games and interact with the screen by throwing a ball at it.
The school's head of sport and physical education Michael Mitchell said the response from students had been "sensational".
"It has had an impact on every student who has participated ... I think it's going to change the school in a very, very big way," he said.
"Some activities and games that come with the program, we'll be able to adapt and modify and get kids that previously were quite in danger of missing out on physical activity and also intellectual activities."
The school, which caters for students with intellectual disabilities, received a Victorian government grant to cover the Multiball purchase, making it the first Australian school to install the technology.
Mr Mitchell said he chose Multiball because it was unique and he thought it could help students with special needs.
"Many of our students react to colour and movement, sound, and being truly interactive, the screen provides all that for our students on a huge scale," he said.
"So it's not just those that are able-bodied and highly skilled or have got flexibility and physical capabilities that can participate."
Multiball was developed in Germany and has since been adopted around the world for use in retail shops, airports, schools, and workplaces.
Students becoming less active
As well as challenging students physically, Mr Mitchell said the games helped to develop their skills.
"[It gives students] the ability to engage in activities that involve dexterity, reaction time, but most importantly, decision making," he said.
"You could see students having to use their strategic-thinking skills, their problem-solving skills, in a way that they have never really had the opportunity to do so before."
Mr Mitchell the combination of video games — which was a popular hobby among students — and sport was a "brilliant crossover" that encouraged students to lead less sedentary lives.
"It taps into a lot of our students who enjoy the use of iPads and things like that," he said.
La Trobe University digital technology and pedagogy lecturer Clare Southerton said children were the earliest adopters of new technologies and she was not concerned about children's increasing dependence and involvement with screens.
"Seeing if those kinds of gamification tools can be effective is actually a really exciting educational tool," Dr Southerton said.
"I think that this technology could be an effective way to see if we can engage those children that for whatever reason, sport hasn't been something that's interested them."
Is it addictive?
Dr Southerton said although many parents were concerned about gaming addiction, research on the topic has been inconsistent, and games could be beneficial if they are educational and age-appropriate.
"I think that's really the key issue when it comes to screen time. It's about quality, not necessarily purely about quantity," she said.
"We often categorise video games in this new sort of category, like they're much more addictive than say, television or literacy ... but really, the evidence just isn't there that they're especially habit-forming kinds of technologies."
She said children were especially drawn to the rewards system in video games and this could be used to motivate students in a range of educational activities.
"It might be that you have to do all of these spelling tests and then in the end, your character can move on to the next level and at the next level, they get a new outfit or something like that, so that they can level up the character," Dr Southerton said.
Dr Southerton warned the makers of some of these technologies were commercially motivated and it was important for educators to be cautious about where they were integrated.
"So if we bring them into the classroom, and the students are using them, and we're noticing that they're actually not as engaged, or the learning outcomes aren't being achieved, then we have to think about whether that technology is appropriate," she said.
