Suggests how simulation games can be used in the classroom to help students understand situations such as politics, war, international relations, and social activities. Explains how to design a simulation game and presents teacher and student instructions for a game entitled "The Battle of Bunker Hill." (DB)

The use of academic games as a tool for the mainstreaming of handicapped children is presented. It is explained that the games should stress cooperation rather than competition. The following four phases of game development are explained: foundation, formulation, experimentation, and evaluation. (PHR)

Analyzes instructional simulation games as systems of communication in which information is transmitted by game designers to players via channels such as scenarios, rules, and other players. Particular attention is given to the process whereby theoretical messages are encoded by game designers into game stories and then are decoded by players back…

Discusses the advantages of video games in an educational setting, criteria to be used in selecting them, and their potential impact on teaching. (DD)

Describes the Environmental Action Task activity, which may be used as a recreational game or an environmental perception experience, may be conducted indoors or out-of-doors, using weed stems (or spaghetti) and masking tape to construct a cantilever. Small groups of children work together to make the cantilever with the longest arm. Further…

Focuses on the formative evaluation of games in order to improve their instructional effectiveness and motivational strength. (Author)

Describes a closed circuit television quiz show using student panelists and cameramen. (BD)

Forty-six intermediate and junior high students with disabilities (learning, emotional disturbance, mental retardation) participated in a noncompetitive Math Olympics. Teams of students participated in game-like activities involving basic skills, calculators, problem solving, and place value. Guidelines for planning a Math Olympics focus on…

Presents a model of instructional games and learning that elaborates key features of games that are of interest from an instructional perspective; the game cycle of user judgments, behavior, and feedback; and types of learning outcomes that can be achieved. Discusses implications for the design and implementation of effective instructional games.…

This article describes the German word game, Lex-Olympics, which provides students with an entertaining way to learn German vocabulary and grammar. Questions are presented in multiple choice format, and twenty different topics are available for three different levels of difficulty (beginning, intermediate, advanced). (AP)

Focuses on instructional games designed to teach about environmental topics such as wetlands, pollution, endangered species, population, energy, and individual effects on the environment. Fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students (N=295) were tested, and significant results were found between students who played four games and those who did not…

Describes Chomp, an educational strategy game for use in high school programming courses that can encourage cooperative learning. Discusses rules of the game; Chomp players; Chomp board programs; Chomp tournaments; Chomp strategies; and extensions of the activity that can involve more advanced mathematics. (LRW)

Recommends a handful of activities that have consistently proven both useful to the author and helpful to his students. Describes activities including the Thesaurus Game, Word Pairs, Signs and Notices, the Sears Roebuck Game, the Mental Symposium, and Cubing. Concludes that these six devices prod students in directions that help them concentrate…

Describes the design of an online competitive learning environment that involved three basic competitive forms and 16 competitive activities to stimulate student motivation. Explains "Joyce", a system in which users can compete with either a computer agent or via the Internet. (Author/LRW)

Poses a problem in which readers are asked to determine which pentomino pieces will form a square. (YDS)