Presents a list of class activities for Black History Month to help students study African heritage. The activities listed, with appropriate grade levels, are storytelling, dances and games, crafts, posters, live-in history, movers and shapers, and a play. Each activity is explained in the pages that follow in this issue. (SM)

Presents guidelines for teaching students about African culture via dances and games and for developing related activities to expand student learning experiences. Student activity pages describe how to do the Ghana national dance and how to play Mankala, a popular African game. (SM)

Summarizes recent military simulation and gaming applications, discusses trends that are affecting their use and development, and describes organizations that are involved with military simulations. Highlights include areas of application, including education and training, analysis, mission support, and evaluation; measuring simulation…

Presents two puzzles that can be used in the classroom for teaching Canadian history during the world wars. Includes a word find puzzle and a crossword puzzle. Explains that both puzzles include names of major battles, significant events, and personalities from Canada's wartime history. (DK)

In 2 studies, 374 undergraduate students gave retrospective reports of their favorite games, toys, hobbies, and sports in elementary school, high school, and college. Results show that sex similarities and differences vary as a function of kind of play. Implications of sex differences for socialization and moral reasoning are discussed. (SLD)

Discusses training for student assistants in academic libraries, reviews the literature on role playing, and describes "The Reference Game," a role-playing exercise used to train reference student assistants at Baylor University (Texas). Description notes participant roles, preparation, rules of the game, typical questions, and…

Explores ring games--where participants form a circle, sing, dance, and take turns entering the circle--and how they can be used in the second-language classroom. The playful integration of vocalization and rhythmic body movement can have a powerful influence on speech fluency. (Author/VWL)

A study investigated whether rotating three-dimensional objects using virtual reality would affect flexible thinking in 14 children (ages 8-11) with hearing impairments. Children played virtual 3-D Tetris individually, 15 minutes once weekly over 3 months. Before-and-after testing showed significantly improved flexible thinking in the experimental…

Examined the inclusion of an asthma education space adventure game into fourth-grade classrooms. Pretesting and posttesting indicated that using the game significantly improved students' asthma knowledge in the intervention classroom over the observation period. Knowledge gained was retained over a 4-week period. The addition of physician-led…

Reports the development and validation of video-based game-understanding tests in badminton for elementary and secondary students. The tests included different sequences that simulated actual game situations. Players had to solve tactical problems by selecting appropriate solutions and arguments for their decisions. Results suggest that the test…

Contends that active learning allows students to become involved in learning by exploring issues and ideas under the guidance of the instructor. Describes the Market Game as an example of active learning that is an interactive game that simulates the behavior of a competitive market. Explores the students' reactions to the game. (CMK)

Presents a game called Push-Penny, played by pushing a coin and having it land on a line, used to teach students to develop intuitive feelings for the consequences of randomness, including data handling and the construction and use of tables and graphs. (ASK)

Presents ideas which offer a change from the normal school library media center orientation. Suggestions include: name tags, relay races for information, Dewey Decimal Hopscotch, written descriptions of the library media center, introduction of sections of the library media center with answers for students to supply questions to, short quizzes,…

A lack of gender-sensitive computer games exacerbates female disinterest in technology. Girls-only focus groups revealed phenomena that may help software developers awaken girls' enthusiasm for computing. For instance, girls placed a premium on richly textured video and audio, on collaborating rather than competing, on interacting with male…

Provides a brief overview of the history, research, and theory related to play. Research from education, psychology, and anthropology suggests that play is a powerful mediator for lifelong learning, and the design of hybrid learning environments is suggested based on the constructivist concept of microworlds and supported with games and…