Games and Simulations in Online Learning: Research and Development Frameworks examines the potential of games and simulations in online learning, and how the future could look as developers learn to use the emerging capabilities of the Semantic Web. It presents a general understanding of how the Semantic Web will impact education and how games and…

The four reports contained in this document examine the effects of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), which entered the lives of many children in the United States in 1986. The first report discusses a study of children's interaction with the game hardware. The study of fourth- and fifth-grade students indicated that children's interaction…

This study examined family media habits, including the use of television, movies, videos, computer and video games, the Internet, music, and print media. The study was conducted by mail with telephone follow-ups, surveying a national random sample of 527 parents of 2- to 17-year-olds who completed MediaQuotient questionnaires. Findings were…

Video games have become one of the favorite activities of children in America. A growing body of research links violent video game play to aggressive cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors. This study tested the predictions that exposure to violent video game content is: (1) positively correlated with hostile attribution bias; (2) positively…

Three nonvocal students (ages 5-8) with severe physical handicaps were trained in scan and selection responses (similar to responses needed for operating augmentative communication systems) using a microcomputer-operated video-game format. Results indicated that all three children showed substantial increases in the number of correct responses and…

In this article, the challenges and issues of designing next generation learning environments using current and emerging technologies are addressed. An overview of the issues is provided as well as design principles that support the design of instruction and the overall learning environment. Specific methods for creating cognitively complex,…

Video games have become one of the favorite activities of American children. A growing body of research is linking violent video game play to aggressive cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors. The first goal of this study was to document the video games habits of adolescents and the level of parental monitoring of adolescent video game use. The…

As often as language teachers lecture about the importance of continual practice to adolescent learners, the dullness of homework exercises designed primarily to be educational has difficulty competing with popular media designed solely to be entertaining. Recently, numerous attempts have been made to develop "edutainment" titles that seek to…

The idea of media literacy prompts an increasingly divisive debate between educators who wish to protect children from the commercialization of global markets and those who challenge critical media studies as misguided, outdated, and ineffective. We have provided a historical overview of changing conceptions of media literacy as preparation and…

This digest examines data on video game use by children, explains ratings of video game violence, and reviews research on the effects of video games on children and adolescents. A recent study of seventh and eighth graders found that 65% of males and 57% of females played 1 to 6 hours of video games at home per week, and 38% of males and 16% of…

Extended and tested Deutsch's theory of competition effects. Predicted that people view competitive situations as inherently more aggressive than cooperative ones. Predicted that leading people to think of an aggressive situation in competitive terms would increase aggressive behavior. Increase of kill ratio occurred in absence of changes in…

This paper reports on the first stage of a project to develop and test the use of massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) for promoting computer supported collaborative learning through instructional gaming in the high school classroom. Teachers and students of English and Science at Swan View Senior High School, Western…

This article provides a review of some of the currently available literature surrounding the academic study of video games. Many of these theoretical methods have been used to study film and television and are discussed here in order to frame the need for further examination of video games. Suggestions for the use of video games in the classroom…

This Digest reviews research on the demographics and effects of video game playing, discusses game rating systems, and offers recommendations for parents. The Digest begins by discussing research on the time children spend playing electronic games, which shows that younger children's game playing at home (90% of fourth-graders played at least one…

This study investigated whether kindergarten students who played Sony Play Station (Lightspan) computer games learned better than peers who did not play such games. Participants were 47 African-American kindergartners from two classes of an urban school in the Northeast. A pretest and posttest with control group design was used in the study. The…