Jon-Paul C. Dyson is vice president for exhibits and director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) at The Strong. Trained as a cultural and intellectual historian, he joined The Strong in 1998 and has worked on and supervised the development of dozens of exhibits on play and video games. He initiated the museum's…

In this review article, I argue that games are complementary, not self-supporting, learning tools for democratic education because they can: (a) offer "simplified, but often not simple, outlines" (later called "models") of complex social systems that generate further inquiry; (b) provide "practice spaces" for…

In this commentary, the authors discuss the topic of ostracism--being ignored and excluded--as a painful social phenomenon that most individuals have experienced at least once in their lives, and sometimes daily. The harmful power of ostracism is not short-lived; data suggest that participants asked to relive ostracism by writing an…

Sigmund Tobias came to the United States in 1948, after his family had fled to China from the Holocaust in Europe. His Memoir ("Strange Haven: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Shanghai") describes that part of his life. He settled in New York, where he completed his B.A. and M.S. in School Psychology from the City College of New York, and a…

K-12 education in the U.S. is costing one-half trillion dollars annually. In constant dollars, the amount spent per student has increased 600% in the last sixty years. Test scores, however, have remained flat. Political leaders are constantly clamoring for more education dollars, yet there is no clear direction on how the funds will be used…

There is growing interest in the use of games for educational purposes, particularly with regard to teaching curriculum subjects. Much of the research, however, has focused either on the content of games or the learning theory they illustrate. This paper presents a methodology that allows for an examination of how players learn to play. The focus…