The purpose of this study was to examine students' learning of simple machines, a fifth-grade (ages 10-11) forces and motion unit, and student engagement using a teacher-created Multiplayer Educational Gaming Application. This mixed-method study collected pre-test/post-test results to determine student knowledge about simple machines. A survey…

Computers are becoming the norm for teaching and learning. The Internet gives people ready access to text, visual and audio messages from around the world. For teachers, content is critical and the future dictates the need for major changes in the role of the teacher and learner. Today's digital tools and video games have proven to be well known…

Noting that the social and emotional experiences of American children today often heavily involve electronic media, Barbara Wilson takes a close look at how exposure to screen media affects children's well-being and development. She concludes that media influence on children depends more on the type of content that children find attractive than on…

Today's K-20 students have been called, among other names, the net generation. As they matriculate through the education system, they are often exposed to materials and manipulatives used for the past 40 years, and not to the digital media to which they are accustomed. As student scores continue to regress from Grade 3 to Grade 12 and technical…

This article describes a graduate distance education course at North Carolina State University, which combined science content and pedagogy with video game design. The course was conducted entirely in a synchronous, online, Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) through the ActiveWorlds[TM] platform. Inservice teachers enrolled as graduate students in…

The Kaiser Family Foundation released a report entitled "Kids and Media Use" in the United States that concluded that children's use of media--including television, computers, Internet, video games, and phones--may be one of the primary contributor's to the poor fitness and obesity of many of today's adolescents. The present study examines the…

In an age where multi-media, such as video games and computer generated games, are consuming the lives of young adults, students are reading fewer novels and engaging less in recreational reading activities. Because of the ever-changing diverse student population teachers are searching for ways to be competitive motivators. Today, teachers need to…

Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, a research project was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of video games as inquiry-based learning experiences for the science classroom. As a result, the video game, "Creature Control: The Quest for Homeostasis" was developed and field-tested in select middle schools in the United States.…

The communication and collaborative interface known as a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE), has existed since as early as the late 1970s. MUVEs refer to programs that have an animated character ("avatar") controlled by a user within a wider environment that can be explored--or built--at will. Second Life, a MUVE created by San Francisco-based…

New video and computer game ideas reach the stage of production by a company when they are "pitched" by game developers to game publishers. Learning how to "pitch" technology products has great educational value for technology education students. In this article, the author shares his experience with helping his students master…

This essay presents a case study of the modes used in training employees at a munitions plant in Ohio between 1940 and 1945. Theories of multimodal discourse and learning advanced by The New London Group (1996), Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen (2001) and Richard Mayer (2001) inform this analysis. With an unskilled labor force and many workers…

There are several major challenges for instructional designers seeking to design learning games. These include the lack of access, the cost of rapidly advancing/expensive technology tools that make developing games uneconomical, the institutional time constraints limiting game use, and the concerns that schools lack sufficiently robust computer…

This paper develops the argument that new literacies constitute an indispensable foundation for developing school discourse among 1.5 and newcomer urban adolescents. A mother and literacy educator presents insights learned from indirectly participating in co-constructing Standard English discourse with her newcomer adolescent son through video…

Members met to discuss the various forms of interactive violence and the potential negative impact it has on children at this hearing. Statements made by the following individuals are included in this document: [Panel I]Senator Sam Brownback; Dr. David Walsh, President, National Institute on Media and the Family (additional documents); Mrs.…

Attempts to put ongoing U.S. and United Kingdom amusement machine debates into empirical perspective. Conducts comparative analysis of video games and fruit machines (slot machines) by examining incidence of play, sex differences and psychological characteristics of machine players, observational findings in arcade settings, alleged negative…