The first chapter provides an overview of the popular systems for distance learning. In the second chapter, a review of all major social and economic activities in order to improve the system of virtual learning is given. The third chapter deals with the influence of technology in the management of educational institutions. The fourth chapter…

Gendered appearance in "World of Warcraft" is of particular interest because it seems to infiltrate interactions between individuals without serving a functional purpose within the game itself. It provides an opportunity to look at avatar choice in environments that have a primary purpose aside from existing as an arena for creating identity, and…

The article presents a brief overview of the Neighbourhood Game Design Project, a studio-based curriculum intervention aimed at engaging students in the design of place-based mobile games and interactive stories using geo-locative technologies (for example, GPS enabled cell phones). It describes the three curricular components that defined the…

Traces the roots of social trap situations and describes a parasitism-symbiosis model, showing that when each organism attempts to maximize its survival potential without regard for the other's, neither does as well as when they behave collectively. Discusses a model social trap situation, "Prisoner's Dilemma" ("PD") and a…

"World of Warcraft" is an online computer game with over nine million players, many of them technically-minded young males. A proportion of these young males engage in spontaneous creative writing about their game adventures. They enjoy highly formulaic genres, such as the epic poem, with its complex technical requirements. This has…

Background: Many of the potential benefits of using virtual worlds for teaching and learning are difficult to define and often become overly focused on the functionality of the technology or on its ability to support informal or "social" forms of learning. Purpose: The aim of the paper is to highlight the experiential nature of virtual…

This paper describes the forms of knowledge used by players of fantasy sports, games where players create ideal sports teams and compete to accumulate points based on professional athletes' statistical performances. Messages from a discussion forum associated with a popular fantasy basketball game were analyzed to understand how players described…