Documents current adolescent electronic game-playing habits, exploring associations among preference for violent games, frequency and location of play, and self-concept. Identifies marked gender differences in game-playing habits and in scores on a self-perception profile. Finds that for girls, more time playing video or computer games is…

Discussion of the difference between an educational simulation and other interactive learning events highlights the effects terminology can have on both facilitators and participants. Five common mistakes made in running simulations are identified, and gaming terminology used in Britain and in the United States is discussed. (three references)…

Notes that the emergence of powerful microcomputers, along with accessible authoring systems, allow teachers the opportunity to extend their classroom game design efforts into digital media. Argues that these efforts, for effective and efficient design, should be informed by guidance from literature on instructional game design, educational…

Gaming is discussed against a background of rationalist and historicist traditions of reality; trivial and nontrivial machine models of problem solving; and rigid-rule and free-form games. (JKP)

In the Playground project, we applied a constructionist learning perspective in order to build a computational learning environment in which children could design and build their own video games. In this paper, we present results from a study where children were given semi-structured programming tasks in an adventure game designed to investigate…

This article presents an interview with Clark Aldrich, whose expertise as an "e-learning guru" (one of three identified by "Fortune" magazine in November 2000) rests on substantial foundations: his service as the Gartner Group research director who initiated and developed the firm's e-learning coverage, his leadership of the world class team that…

This article describes how a crystal ball known as "The Flash Mind Reader" is played. "The Flash Mind Reader" is a mathematics game in which the player is invited to select any-two digit number and then subtract the sum of these two digits from the original number. A chart is provided in which the (adjusted) number they…

Created for a Metric Day activity, Metric Madness is a board game for two to four players. Students review and practice metric vocabulary, measurement, and calculations by playing the game. Playing time is approximately twenty to thirty minutes.

The authors describe an in-class exercise in which students participate in an auction to buy US Airways. The exercise is based on events of late 1995, in which neither United nor American Airlines decided to bid for US Airways. Two teams of students participate in an English auction. Students learn that the equilibrium of the sequential game is…

This article explores how the future of mobile learning games lies in the blurring of the line between fun and learning, between in-school and out-of-school. Accomplishing this requires new paradigms as well as new technologies. Mobile learning games can be the conduits between the world of school and the world of life, and make them both more fun…

Contrary to common belief, several studies have found no relationship between video gaming and obesity or physical inactivity. In fact, video gaming is an untapped resource for enhancing young people's motivation and ability to participate in sports and other movement-based activities. Many popular video games offer sophisticated and engaging…

In the paper we present a simple game that students can play in the classroom. The game can be used to show that random variables can behave in an unexpected way: the expected mean can tend to zero or to infinity; the variance can tend to zero or to infinity. The game can also be used to introduce the lognormal distribution. (Contains 1 table and…

Recent decades have produced millions of medieval re-enactors, role players, and fantasy buffs -- and billions of dollars for the industries that fuel them. However, writes Gravois, academic medievalists have viewed this engorged popular interest not as an embarrassment of riches, but as simply embarrassment. Yet those same re-enactors, role…

It makes sense that the more information people share, the better they communicate. To evaluate the effect of knowledge overlap on the effectiveness of communication, participants played a communication game where the "director" identified objects to the "addressee". Pairs either shared information about most objects' names (high overlap), or…

Higher education in the U.S. has traditionally prepared students for work and social success, but with families, work, and society itself undergoing revolutionary change, is this preparation sufficient to develop the 21st-century workforce? This book explores how evolving family structures, new ways of balancing work and personal lives, and rapid…