This article explicates the ways that developers working at an independent game company in New York City organized their development process around a deep concern for how players make meaning from their games. Two designers' descriptions of their processes are used to illustrate the company's commitment to developing games that invite…

This paper examines how virtual worlds and other advanced social media can be married with problem-based learning to encourage creativity and critical thinking in the English/Language Arts classroom, particularly for middle school, high school, and undergraduate college education. Virtual world experiences such as "Second Life," Jumpstart.com, and…

Since MIT and Harvard started edX, their joint experiment with free online courses, the venture has attracted enormous attention for opening the ivory tower to the world. But in the process, the world will become part of an expensive and ambitious experiment testing some of the most interesting--and difficult--questions in digital education. Can…

Boy culture is out of sync with school culture. There are several reasons for this, including zero tolerance policies that are too often taken to extremes, the lack of male teachers, and the compression of the curriculum. What's more, boy culture is not socially accepted, and boys quickly come to feel that they are not good at school. For many…

As a fifth-grade mathematics teacher, the author tries to create authentic problem-solving activities that connect to the world in which his students live. He discovered a natural connection to his students' real world at a computer camp. A friend introduced him to Alice, a computer application developed at Carnegie Mellon, under the leadership of…

This article reports on the decline in writing ability skills in secondary and higher education students. The author discusses changes that have affected student writing skills over the recent decades and offers recommendations for improving these skills, such as: implementing intensive freshman writing courses; adjusting existing course…

The use of data is critical to the teaching of probability and statistics. At the very least, data should be provided within a meaningful context rather than presented as a generic, meaningless collection of numbers. Students often respond better, however, when working with data that they have gathered themselves. Having students collect data is a…

When kids play video games, they want to perfect their skills, advance to the next level, and become a master. It is the kind of focus that many teachers would love to see in their classrooms. From elementary through high school, computer games are being woven into the curriculum to engage students in new ways. However, many schools lack the…

The computer game of quantum minesweeper is introduced as a quantum extension of the well-known classical minesweeper. Its main objective is to teach the unique concepts of quantum mechanics in a fun way. Quantum minesweeper demonstrates the effects of superposition, entanglement and their non-local characteristics. While in the classical…

The dominant view of technology so far has been that it is a tool to help improve the teaching of traditional subjects--knowledge mostly about the local and physical world. But technology has created a new realm: the virtual world. It may not be physical or tangible, but the virtual world is indisputable and has a significant economy. If one…

The issue of violent video game influences on youth violence and aggression remains intensely debated in the scholarly literature and among the general public. Several recent meta-analyses, examining outcome measures most closely related to serious aggressive acts, found little evidence for a relationship between violent video games and aggression…

Although the challenges around participation in online gaming grow, gamers and their partners who experience online relationship issues related to gaming, present a new set of treatment challenges for therapists. In this article, we report on the findings of a hermeneutic research study aimed at evaluating the scholarly literature related to…

There is currently a rapidly growing interest in inquiry learning and an emerging consensus among researchers that, particularly when supported by technology, it can be a significant vehicle for developing higher order thinking skills. Inquiry learning methods also offer learners meaningful and productive approaches to the development of their…

Using games as a learning tool is not new--research abounds to demonstrate the use of video games enhancing problem-solving skills and creativity. Pioneer educational games, like Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail, have given birth to online, multiuser, digital simulations that would make their forebears blush. Now, in what seems to be a natural…

Suppose we had a brand new world to study--a world that possibly works with a different set of principles, a non-Newtonian world. Maybe this world is Newtonian, maybe it isn't. This world exists in video games, and it is open for exploration. Most video games try to incorporate realistic physics, but sometimes this does not happen. The obvious…