Tag Archives: technology

This week we were discussing how household work changed in 20th century. In the article “Twentieth century Changes in Household Technologies.” we traced how housework changed qualitatively and quantitatively. We also discussed how technological sphere in household becomes another field of work. In our days people bring their household chores into internet space! The game Choir Wars is free online game that allows to turn real-life chores into points that are used in the game. Players can make a list of chores together and then game assigns certain rewards for them.

As one father was saying in his blog, the game helped to motivate kids in doing their house chores. He mentions that even though kids still got the same tasks and rewards as they did before the game, now they felt as they earned those rewards more then before.

I think what can be interesting for our class is that transformation that game makes of routine physically performed tasks into online game. It shows how much technology means in modern households and how it can be used in stabilizing relationship between family members.  Players report that they have less conflicts about who should do what and in what time. for those who have kids this game became powerful motivational tool.

The Choir Wars also can be seen as an epiphany in child marketing.  It manages to “sell” kids work that they usually don’t want to do. It employs media of computer game to make housework cool and attract kids by experience points and rewards they can redeem online after they finish real-life task.

P.S.:  If you know kids who spend all they time online, this may be the way to make them do something for their family on chorewars.com.