When culture is integrated into the mathematics classroom, it improves students' academic achievement, helps move classrooms towards an equitable learning environment, helps students to have positive beliefs about mathematics, and integrates mathematics with other disciplines. Moreover, if you observe today's kids, the use of video games in their…

This article reports the potential of online role-playing games to be a powerful tool for English as a second language (ESL) learning. When Professor Edd Schneider and game designer Kai Zheng suggested to attendees gathered in San Francisco last spring for the annual Game Developers Conference that massively multiplayer online role-playing games,…

Computer video games are an emerging instructional medium offering strong degrees of cognitive efficiencies for experiential learning, team building, and greater understanding of abstract concepts. As with other new media adopted for use by instructional technologists for pedagogical purposes, barriers to classroom implementation have manifested…

The relationship between videogame usage, active exercise, television viewing, and measures of blood pressure is explored. Videogame participation, especially playing sports or action games, simulates involvement in aggressive situations. This may activate the fight or flight response in players. This response has been associated with blood…

Surveyed 357 seventh and eighth graders about video game play and preference. Found that approximately 64% of boys and 56% of girls played one to two hours of video games per week at home; and that, among five categories of video games, those most preferred by the students were games that involved fantasy violence and sports games. (BC)

The motor control of 49 unmedicated boys clinically diagnosed with ADHD, case-matched with 49 non-ADHD boys, was assessed while playing Crash Bandicoot I, a SonyTM Playstation platform computer video game. In Crash Bandicoot participants control the movements of a small-animated figure through a hazardous jungle environment. Operationally defined…

This study investigates how game playing experience changes when a story is added to a first-person shooter game. Dependent variables include identification, presence, emotional experiences and motivations. When story was present, game players felt greater identification, sense of presence, and physiological arousal. The presence of story did not…

It is believed that repeated exposure to real-life and to entertainment violence may alter cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes, possibly leading to desensitization. The goal of the present study was to determine if there are relationships between real-life and media violence exposure and desensitization as reflected in related…

Interactive digital media, or video games, are a powerful new medium. They offer immersive experiences in which players solve problems. Players learn more than just facts--ways of seeing and understanding problems so that they "become" different kinds of people. "Serious games" coming from business strategy, advergaming, and entertainment gaming…

This book was written both to examine and reveal the Gamer generation as a popular culture trend that has been two plus decades in the making and shaping. And, it is a generation that is now entering college--Gen G. This book explores how the Gamer generation is less a subset of the Millennial generation, but rather a unique generation unto…

P.G. Schrader, Dongping Zheng, and Michael Young examine how preservice teachers' personal experiences with video games inform their views of gaming in the classroom. They link the results of their study to current literature and conclude that preservice teachers' experiences steer them away from game genres such as massively multiplayer online…

This article has two primary goals: (a) to illustrate how a closer analysis of language can lead to fruitful insights into the activities that it helps constitute, and (b) to demonstrate the complexity of the practices that make up Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOGaming) through just such an analysis. The first goal is in response to the…

This study used innovative assessment practices to obtain and document broad learning outcomes for a 15-hour game-based curriculum in Quest Atlantis, a multi-user virtual environment that supports school-based participation in socio scientific inquiry in ecological sciences. Design-based methods were used to refine and align the enactment of…

Based on work in media studies, new literacy studies, applied linguistics, the arts and empirical research on the experiences of urban youths' informal media arts practices, we articulate a new vision for media education in the digital age that encompasses new genres, convergence, media mixes and participation. We first outline the history of how…

It is ironic that in too many schools, educators label students' personal tools or digital containers, such as blogs, iPod, Instant Messenger, YouTube, and video games as hindrances to teaching. They have decided that these effective learning tools are inappropriate for school and learning. If educators could get past their fear of the unknown and…