Talking to the Boston Globe about how gaming can be made more educational, Michael Levine, executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center of Sesame Workshop, talked about the opportunity in virtual worlds for kids, and pointed out Sesame Workshop's own efforts to reach the young ones in an educational way.

Along with Merrill Lynch, Sesame Workshop recently launched a kids' virtual world product called Panwapa, which is geared at teaching kids about multiculturalism and what other kids' experiences, languages and lives are like in different countries. It's available in several languages -- Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and English. Levine told the Globe, "Kids need to know other kids and their needs to be good global citizens."

[Via the Boston Globe]