Aim/Purpose: This research is a comparative test between two Human Computer Interaction (HCI) design approaches - Apple versus one informed by child users. Background: There are studies concerning the creation of graphical interfaces for kids, however, they do not involve them in the design process. On the other hand, operating systems such as…

Collaborative learning environments found with gaming communities can provide excellent structures to study the way that learners act within informal learning environments. For example, many of these gaming communities encourage gamers to create videogames and virtual world walkthroughs and commentaries. Walkthroughs and commentaries provide…

Since the mid-1990s, however, the popularity, diversity, and application of virtual worlds have spread rapidly. As a result, existing taxonomies and topologies increasingly are becoming less effective at being able to classify and organize the growing diversification of content available in today's virtual worlds. This article presents the…

Digital games have matured substantially as a narrative medium in the last decade. However, there is still much work to be done to more fully understand the poetics of story-based-games. Game narrative remains an important issue with significant cultural, economic and scholarly implications. In this article, we undertake a critical analysis of the…

Multiuser immersive learning scenarios hold strong potential for lifelong learning as they can support the acquisition of higher order skills in an effective, efficient, and attractive way. Existing virtual worlds, game development platforms, and game engines only partly cater for the proliferation of such learning scenarios as they are often…

This paper describes ToonTalk, a general-purpose concurrent programming system in which the source code is animated and the programming environment is a video game. The design objectives of ToonTalk were to create a self-teaching programming system for children that was also a very powerful and flexible programming tool. A keyboard can be used for…