In the last decade, more and more games have been developed for handheld devices. Furthermore, the popularity of handheld devices and increase of wireless computing can be taken advantage of to provide students with more learning opportunities. Games also could bring promising benefits--specifically, motivating students to learn/play, sustaining…

In 30 years of teaching, the author never taught explicitly about coal. Coal appeared in his social studies curriculum solely as a labor issue, and coal was mostly invisible in his history classes. The world cannot afford this kind of curricular invisibility today. Forty percent of the main greenhouse gas produced in the United States, carbon…

This article reports on the 2008 ISAGA Summer School held in New Delhi (Gurgaon), India. This Summer School was hosted by the Institute for Integrated Learning in Management. Participants came from all over the world. This year's theme was "The Art and Science of Simulation and Gaming Design and Facilitation for Business and Management."

The playing of games has been a long standing tradition in physical education. Yet despite its history, the teaching of games within primary physical education lessons remains something of a weakness. This is most evident through a continued focus upon skill acquisition and a lack of fostering of a real "tactical understanding" of game…

When the author visits art museums, she always winds up in the children's section of the museum shop looking for appropriate books and games for her students. The games always intrigue her; however, they are rarely designed for more than two to four players, and the cost is often prohibitive. In light of this frustrating situation, she has spent a…

This book focuses on the interplay between pedagogy and technology, and their fusion for the advancement of smart learning environments. It discusses various components of this interplay, including learning and assessment paradigms, social factors and policies, emerging technologies, innovative application of mature technologies, transformation of…

This study, based on Taiwanese geographical concepts, develops a multi-touch interactive jigsaw puzzle (MIJP) to assist primary school students in solving geographical puzzles. The MIJP, which has multi-touch operating characteristics and provides two kinds of scaffolding tools, each with a different level of difficulty, can assist students in…

The objective of this study was to identify determinants of professionals' intention to use the new board game SeCZ TaLK to facilitate sexual health discussions with young people with chronic health conditions and disabilities, and to gauge whether intention led to actual use. A cross-sectional web-based survey of 336 professionals before they…

Active learning, including in-class debates, is used in social science classrooms as a means of improving meaning and increasing understanding of complex materials. However, in-class debates do not fully satisfy all aspects of experiential learning because students do not get to experience the results of multifaceted concepts, such as strategic…

This paper compares the results of two surveys conducted between July 2009 and January 2010 with 45 subject matter experts (SMEs) and 41 game experts in the UK. The surveys examine the attitudes and attitude differences of the participants towards teachers who use games in the classroom and studios that produced educational games. The findings…

Learning through play is currently an effective and attractive educational strategy. However, are all educational video games (EVG) successful and do they always keep the player motivated? Here, the authors emphasize that the success of an EVG will be more achievable if the game quality is measured, and suggest the use of playability property as a…

Brain Bingo is a tutorial activity for helping undergraduate psychology students learn complex physiological terms. In two experiments, the authors tested pretest and posttest knowledge, and in Experiment 2, the authors tested retention after 5 weeks. In Experiment 1 (n = 41), the experimental group (Brain Bingo) recalled more terms than the…

Though video games are commonly considered to hold great potential as learning environments, their effectiveness as a teaching tool has yet to be determined. One reason for this is that researchers often run into the problem of multicollinearity between prior knowledge, in-game performance, and posttest scores, thereby making the determination of…

We believe video games have a place in libraries. We start by describing two provocative video games. Next, we offer a framework for the general mission of libraries, including access, motivation, and guidance. As a medium, video games have some distinguishing traits: they are visual, interactive, and based on simulations. We explain how these…

In this issue, I draw together two sets of papers, with apparently different agendas. Most of the original papers in this issue use various learning perspectives and research approaches to explore the challenges and affordances of digital games for learning science. Associated forum papers challenge the authors and us to critically examine our own…