The simultaneous publication of Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You and appearance of media reports of X-rated content in the popular game Grand Theft Auto has renewed controversies surrounding the social effects of computer and video games. On the one hand, videogames scholars argue that videogames are complex, cognitively challenging…

When culture is integrated into the mathematics classroom, it improves students' academic achievement, helps move classrooms towards an equitable learning environment, helps students to have positive beliefs about mathematics, and integrates mathematics with other disciplines. Moreover, if you observe today's kids, the use of video games in their…

To reveal what is being learned during the gaming experience, this report proposes an approach for embedding assessments in immersive games, drawing on recent advances in assessment design. Key to this approach are formative assessment to guide instructional experiences and evidence-centered design to systematically analyze the assessment argument…

For many years, education in South Africa has been based mainly on western values. This has contributed to the fact that many learners from disadvantaged backgrounds cannot see the connection between the education they receive at school and their everyday experiences. This may well have contributed to the high failure rate amongst mathematics…

Over the last four decades, electronic games have profoundly changed the way people play, learn, and connect with each other. Despite the tremendous impact of electronic games, however, until recently, relatively few programs existed to preserve them for future generations of players and researchers. Recognizing the need to save the original…

The research in this dissertation examined the language and literacy practices of middle school children as they played Gamestar Mechanic, a game-based learning environment constituted by a flash-based multiplayer online role-playing game designed to introduce them to the Discourse of game designers, by exposing them to key principles and…

A theoretical analysis of the development of numerical representations indicated that playing linear number board games should enhance preschoolers' numerical knowledge and ability to acquire new numerical knowledge. The effect on knowledge of numerical magnitudes was predicted to be larger when the game was played with a linear board than with a…

The game-based nature of teaching games for understanding means that teachers must be effective observers of game play in order to encourage thinking processes during game play, diagnose the performance problems of participants, and identify solutions. This article briefly reviews the teaching games for understanding (TGFU) approach and describes…

An understanding of proof does not start in a high school geometry course. Rather, attention to logical reasoning throughout a student's school experience can help the development of proof readiness. In the spirit of problem solving, the author has begun to use some Japanese logic puzzles other than sudoku to help students develop additional…

The author describes techniques that he uses to interactively teach economics principles. He describes an experiment on market entry and gives examples of applications of classroom clickers. Clicker applications include (a) collecting data about student preferences that can be used to construct demand curves and supply curves, (b) checking…

Meta-analytic studies have concluded that although training improves spatial cognition in both sexes, the male advantage generally persists. However, because some studies run counter to this pattern, a closer examination of the anomaly is warranted. The authors investigated the acquisition of a basic skill (spatial selective attention) using a…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore why digital games based learning (DGBL) is spreading rapidly in all educational settings, when the literature does not provide clear empirical evidence of the pedagogical benefits. The paper seeks to understand why DGBL is constantly developing despite this lack of consensus about the learning…

This article focuses on the potential of competitive games involving physical movement to facilitate the acquisition of a second or foreign language and argues that such activities can promote educational development too. It first provides a critical overview of the literature on physical games in language learning. Then, it outlines our…

This study examined the relations of parent-youth agreement and disagreement during a joint problem-solving task and multi-methodological indices of socioemotional outcomes in adolescents (mean age = 13). One hundred and sixty-seven parents and their adolescent children participated. Each parent-youth pair played the interactive game "Jenga", and…

Background: The relationship between psychopathic traits and aggression in children may be explained by their reduced sensitivity to signs of distress in others. Emotional cues such as fear and sadness function to make the perpetrator aware of the victim's distress and supposedly inhibit aggression. As children high in psychopathic traits show a…