This article presents the features, design and architecture of the Myst pervasive game platform that has been applied in creating pervasive mobile learning games in various contexts such as science festivals and museums in Finland. Based on our experiences with the development, we draw a set of design principles for creating successfully a…

Uncertainty may be an important component of the motivation provided by learning games, especially when associated with gaming rather than learning. Three studies are reported that explore the influence of gaming uncertainty on engagement with computer-based learning games. In the first study, children (10-11 years) played a simple maths quiz.…

In recent times, physical education teachers have become increasingly aware of the "games-understanding approach" to teaching. As more physical education teachers implement physical education programs that include a games-understanding model, they are becoming increasingly in need of appropriate and authentic assessment strategies. If one accepts…

Intolerance of uncertainty and maladaptive information seeking are linked in many models of worry and clinical anxiety. This study aimed to examine children's use of information to regulate negative arousal associated with uncertainty in an exciting or threatening pretend play context. Children were presented with a positively or negatively…

"The Number Race" is an adaptive game designed to improve number sense. We tested its effectiveness using a cross-over design in 53 low socioeconomic status kindergarteners in France. Children showed improvements in tasks traditionally used to assess number sense (numerical comparison of digits and words). However, there was no…

This article presents an interview with Dr. Luca Botturi, winner of the 2008 Educational Communication and Technology (ECT) Foundation Robert deKeiffer International Fellowship Award. Dr. Botturi, an Italian originally from the suburbs of Milano, works at the Universita della Svizzera italiana (USI, also called the University of Lugano) in its New…

This article explores "Second Life"[TM] (SL) from an educator's perspective. As instructional designers transform instruction from real world to SL, understanding how more traditional forms of teaching and learning transfer to the immersive spaces of virtual life may be critical. This article identifies principles of instruction for virtual worlds…

In Experiment 1, "more" and "less" relations were trained for arbitrary Stimuli A1 and A2 with 3 children with autism. The following conditional discriminations were then trained: A1-B1, A2-B2, B1-C1, B2-C2. In subsequent tests, participants showed derived more-less mands (mand with C1 for more and mand with C2 for less). A training procedure…

Previous research suggests that action video game play improves attentional resources, allowing gamers to better allocate their attention across both space and time. In order to further characterize the plastic changes resulting from playing these video games, we administered the Attentional Network Test (ANT) to action game players and…

The author was originally inspired by "The Exquisite Snake" exhibit she saw at a local museum. Two hundred contemporary artists contributed to this exhibit, which was an adaptation of the old parlor game called "The Exquisite Corpse" that Surrealist artists used to play in the late 1920s and '30s. The author just loved this idea and decided to…

Traditional ways of teaching--working from a textbook, designing quizzes, and assigning seat work--are predicated on the idea of students' ability and desire to self-regulate. However, these sedentary techniques are ineffective with unmotivated students and poor readers. Teachers commonly invoke fear of failure in an attempt to engage students in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of type of question prompt and level of prior knowledge on non-routine mathematical problem solving. A computer game was blended within the pattern reasoning tasks, along with question prompts, in order to demonstrate and enhance the connections between viable problem-solving strategies and…

This article presents a game theory analysis of legislating private education in China, based on set of primary and secondary documents related to this issue. The article argues that shaping educational legislation is a dynamic, repeated game of negotiation, cooperation, and/or competition on multiple occasions among various interested actors,…

Global social justice is often portrayed as a project of either developing appropriate dispositions or of amending the rules that govern global interaction. Despite policy pronouncements by many university vice chancellors on the significance of higher education in contributing to learning about global social justice, there is very little…

This article discusses the use of hand-clapping games and dances in the music classroom. In addition to their use for teaching music skills and concepts, these games can be quite useful for making cross-disciplinary connections to reinforce the eighth and ninth National Standards for Music Education (Standard 8: understanding relationships between…