Eco-games help kids to do good

— -- With Earth Day coming on April 22, the Internet offers many activities that can heighten kids' awareness of environmental issues. Here are some that are worth checking out.

'The Greens'

For a free humorous take on environmental issues, send kids ages 7-14 to www.MeetTheGreens.com. Produced by PBS content-creator WGBH and funded in part by the National Geographic Educational Foundation, the site offers 11 webisodes — short video stories -that cover a wide variety of issues about living "green." Featuring cousins Izz and Dex, the site presents real-life eco issues through the eyes of these hip teens. In the most recent episode called That's a Wrap, Dex unwraps a large present with numerous smaller boxes inside to discover that the sender has given him a small notecard stating that a tree has been planted in his honor. Wryly, Dex notes: "But you have probably used a whole tree with all these boxes and wrapping paper." The site goes on to discuss new uses for packaging products and even shows a video about Furoshiki, a Japanese way of wrapping presents by reusing pretty fabric.

With virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) being all the rage among kids, two stand out because they offer online gaming as a way of doing ecological good in the real world.

'Elf Island'

In Elf Island, kids enter a lush virtual world as an elf. While they can design their own elf avatar, buy it a house and decorate it, play fun minigames, and safely chat with others within this world, what makes this online game stand out from the more than 200 others is its overarching theme that being an elf means doing good in the world.

The game ties the story of unlocking the secret of Elf Island to doing a series of "Good Quests" in this virtual world, which are then mirrored in real life. The current "Tree Good Quest" has kids playing games to earn seeds to plant fruit trees in the desert of Niger. Working with nonprofit Plant-It 2020 and the Eden Foundation, when the in-game goal of planting 20,000 trees is reached, 2,000 actual fruit trees will be planted in Niger. In the game, kids are introduced to this challenge by watching a video of an actual child in Niger who asks for their help. Kids learn about how planting trees in Niger will help the people there to grow their food and change the ecosystem so that life is more sustainable in the desert. While playing, kids can also learn more about the partnering nonprofits Plant-it 2020 and the Eden Foundation.