Gender and prior knowledge may affect students' performance and motivation when simulations and games are used for learning. Accommodations should be made for students of different genders and with different levels of prior knowledge. A simulation digital game about the food chain concept geared for elementary school students was developed for…

Lack of motivation and of real-world relevance have been identified as reasons for low interest in science among children. Game-based learning and storytelling are prominent methods for generating intrinsic motivation in learning. Real-world relevance requires connecting abstract scientific concepts with the real world. This can be done by…

This study employed a case study design (Yin, "Case study research, design and methods," 2009) to investigate the processes used by 5th graders to design and develop computer games within the context of their environmental science unit, using the theoretical framework of "constructionism." Ten fifth graders designed computer games using "Scratch"…

Discusses self-regulation, learning to learn, and adaptive problem solving, and describes study of third, fifth, and eighth graders. The study investigated whether providing a model of self-regulating skills via teaching a computer to solve problems would increase the number tasks completed, and decrease the error and trial rate. (11 references)…

A sample of 144 fourth and sixth graders was presented with five children's news stories, in television form or in one of three print versions. Results indicated that children who watched news on television remembered the stories better than children who read one of the three print versions, regardless of their level of reading proficiency.…