Higher education and in particular Colleges of Education are viewed as falling behind in the use of technology for teaching and learning (Lederman & Niess, 2000). With today's student population identified as digital natives and the evening news discussing the potential of virtual worlds as new learning environments, an examination of the…

Computer games are no longer just for entertainment; they have also become a useful instructional strategy for acquiring knowledge. When games are used for purposes other than strict entertainment they become serious games. The goal of serious games is to enable the player to learn a task, master a strategy or develop a skill. Serious games can be…

This edited volume covers the range of critical trends in the use of computers and other devices for classroom teaching, online learning, professional development, school improvement, and student assessment. "Spotlight on Technology in Education" draws on expert sources including teacher-leaders, librarians, researchers, and trainers who…

The main argument being presented in this paper is that instructional designers and educational researchers need to shift their attention from performance to interest. Educational digital games have to aim at building lasting interest in real world applications. The main hypothesis advocated in this paper is that the use of rewards in educational…

Of thirty-eight states with lotteries, sixteen earmark lottery profits for primary and secondary education. In this article, we use a panel data set of states with lotteries to examine the impact of earmarking lottery revenues on state educational spending. We can reject the hypothesis that spending increases dollar for dollar with earmarked…

Shaffer and Hall (1997) have estimated college student gambling to be three times as high as their adult counterparts. Despite a considerable amount of research on gambling, researchers have struggled to develop a universal theory that explains gambling behavior. This study explored the potential of Ajzen and Fishbein's (1980) Theory of Reasoned…

This article explores the simulation of four television quiz shows for students in China studying English as a foreign language (EFL). It discusses the adaptation and implementation of television quiz shows and how the students reacted to them.

In this study a business game is used as a vehicle for implementing decision support systems (DSS). Eighteen companies, consisting of ninety graduating M.B.A. students, participating in a business game were required to develop DSS and to report on the systems developed. Each of the eighteen companies developed a system of their own choosing,…

Students need to have basic understanding of scientific method during their introductory science classes and for this purpose an activity was devised which involved a game based on famous Monty Hall game problem. This particular activity allowed students to banish or confirm their intuition based on empirical evidence.

After a class of ninth graders discovered the helpfulness of the thesaurus in such synonym activities as Synonym Tic-Tac-Toe and Cross-Synonym Puzzles, they started using the thesaurus to locate "the exactly right word" while drafting compositions. They also enriched their oral vocabularies during these activities by discussing synonyms from the…

Immersive Education is a multimillion-dollar project devoted to build virtual-reality software exclusively for education within commercial and nonprofit fantasy spaces like Second Life. The project combines interactive three-dimensional graphics, Web cameras, Internet-based telephony, and other digital media. Some critics have complained that…

A computer lab has become one of the most popular hangouts at Northern Virginia Community College after officials decided to load its PCs with popular video games, install a PlayStation and an Xbox, and declare it "for gamers only." The goal of this lab is to entice students to take game-design and other IT courses. John Min, dean of…

Novel activities enrich a curriculum by allowing students to learn new skills and knowledge, to apply previously learned skills in new ways, and to be introduced to a new challenge that can increase student interest and motivation. This article first presents several considerations when adding a new game to the physical education curriculum. It…

The CARBOHYDECK card game is designed to motivate undergraduate chemistry or biochemistry nonmajors to learn about isomerism of monosaccharides.

This book is the first volume in the "Kids and Computers" series, a series of books designed to help adults easily use high-quality, developmentally appropriate software with children. After reviewing the basics of selected software packages (how to start the program, stop the program, move around, and use special keys) several ideas and…