Games

The Annual Games for Change Festival is the largest gaming event in New York City and the only international event uniting “games for change” creators, the public, civil society, academia, the gaming industry and media.

Edutopia Blog
Neurologist Judy Willis explains in this blog post the scientific reasons students are motivated by video games, and suggests ways that such a model can be used in the classroom. Willis writes that video games offer the brain a mixture of challenges and rewards that make students want to continue progressing — and learning. [...]

For many people with disabilities, games offer a window to the world. To showcase the progress in accessible gaming, the AbleGamers Foundation presents “The Game Accessibility Arcade”, and all-day presentation offering a hands-on showcase of accessibility technology that can enable play on the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PS3, and more. The foundation will be featuring [...]

Nintendo and the American Heart Association (AHA) have come together in a first-of-its-kind campaign, Active Play Now, to help people find fun ways to stay physically active.

Deadline: January 14, 2011
Notification of awards: February 14, 2011
Team Orlando, a unique military collaborative alliance supplemented, supported and augmented by academic and industry leaders in the modeling and simulation, human performance, and training domains, urges game developers to submit papers detailing their innovative creation and use of games in the DoD environment for the Innovations [...]

New York Times
Quest to Learn is a school organized specifically around the idea that digital games are central to the lives of today’s children and also increasingly, as their speed and capability grow, powerful tools for intellectual exploration. Katie Salen, a professor of design and technology at Parsons the New School for Design, also directs [...]

PC World  
Waterloo Labs has developed a technology that enables users of the Nintendo Entertainment System to play “Super Mario Bros. 2″ with eye movements. The system works, according to this report, because the human eye is polarized and creates its own electrical field, which can be synchronized with the electronics integrated into a video game.
Full [...]

BusinessWeek  
A new survey reveals the vast majority of medical school students believe that technology in the form of virtual reality exercises could help them develop the skills they will need as future doctors. The survey of 200 medical students from the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found nearly all (98 percent) believing [...]

CNET 
Video game aficionados might have to enter a credit card or find another way to verify their age before playing a networked game, thanks to a new push from advocacy groups who say they want to protect minors from in-game advertising messages. In-game marketing has become so advanced that it “allows advertisers to track game [...]

eSchool News  
Whether teachers are in a school like Quest to Learn or a traditional classroom, providing professional development to address the challenges presented by transitioning to game-based teaching and learning methods is essential to supporting effective instruction, experts say.
Locating and undergoing the training necessary to integrate games into the classroom is difficult, however, and that [...]

Science Daily  
VI Fit, a project at the University of Nevada, Reno, helps children who are blind become more physically active and healthy through video games. The human-computer interaction research team in the computer science and engineering department has developed a motion-sensing-based tennis and bowling exergame.
Full story

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 
Research shows that video games — even violent games — can improve vision and other brain functions, including math performance, according to presenters at a New York University conference on using games for learning. One researcher said she believes video games will eventually become part of school curricula. “We are testing this hypothesis that [...]

eSchool News 
A project to show youth-produced videos on 2,200 Los Angeles city buses, the next generation of a graphical programming language that allows young people to create their own interactive features, and an online game that teaches kids the environmental impact of their personal choices are among 10 winning projects that will share $1.7 million [...]

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 
A Web-based science game being designed to interest more girls in science and gaming technology won $200,000 in the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition. The Carnegie Science Center’s Click!Online game will feature a fictional spy agency where girls can solve real-world challenges in environmental protection, “expressive technology” and biomedical science. “Senior agents” will [...]

eSchool News 
Researchers at the University of Southern California have created an online game that simulates the college-application process for students. More than 100 students in Los Angeles-area high schools tested the Pathfinder game this year, and USC hopes to win funding to offer the Web-based tool for free to schools, where resources for college counseling [...]

Yahoo! News  
The American Heart Association and Nintendo Co. are teaming up to promote the popular Wii video game console as the health advocacy group concedes that its campaign for traditional exercise isn’t working. The surprising partnership, announced May 17, comes amid growing concern about obesity among kids who spend much of their time watching television [...]

Gamer Investments 
The gaming industry is set to lose $3 billion in potential revenue along with more than 30 million customers as Americans who play video games continue to age and become disabled, according to a new white paper co-written by The AbleGamers Foundation and 7-128 Software. In “Gaming on a Collision Course: Averting significant revenue loss [...]

NCTI will once again head to Boston for the Games for Health conference, presenting in the Accessibility Pre Conference. Games Beyond Entertainment promises to bring together a heady mix of researchers, developers, and gamers who are launching breakthrough approaches to learning, social, and health issues.

eSchool News 
Many health experts point to the amount of “screen time” that today’s students are logging as a key contributing factor in the child obesity epidemic. Now, backed by a campaign launched by First Lady Michelle Obama earlier this year, some schools are using the same technologies that have many kids glued to their cell [...]

eSchool News 
Handheld devices that display 3-D animation could soon be used in the classroom, technology advocates say. New 3-D technology being developed for devices such as Nintendo DS could help students engage in learning with technology they are already using to play video games outside of school, the advocates suggest. “3-D will really benefit education [...]

THE Journal  
Cloud computing and gaming are among the six technologies that will have a major positive impact on K-12 education in the next few years, according to researchers. But education also faces some critical challenges in that timeframe, including challenges that may require fundamental changes to the way we educate in the United States. This [...]

THE Journal  
The company Realityworks has developed a set of Internet-based games to help students experience scenarios and apply business strategies to solve problems. The Entrepreneurship Game teaches students how to launch a product and respond to consumer and market demands, while The Business Game teaches them the basics of bringing a new product to market. [...]

Positive Gaming™ has released the Positive Gaming™ iDANCE2 software. The dance game contains an array of features that make it ideal for creating a fun and engaging environment for players of all ages while also providing cognitive, social and physical development benefits. The system was designed specifically for environments such as fitness centers, schools, YMCAs, [...]

Google News
First lady Michelle Obama is calling on video-game and software developers to design applications that encourage children to adopt a healthier lifestyle. As part of her “Let’s Move!” campaign against childhood obesity, the Apps for Healthy Kids challenge offers winners a share of $40,000 in federal prize money. Developers who create programs that help [...]

THE Journal
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have developed an early-intervention program to improve academic and behavioral skills in kindergarten students thought to be at risk for low achievement. The Focus on Learning program includes laptop applications and games that help students develop reading and vocabulary abilities, an approach to literacy that has students focus on [...]

Science Daily
Regardless of gender or nationality, young people who are exposed to violent video games are more likely to behave more aggressively, and be less caring, than those who are not.
Full Story

EA Sports
Throughout its history, EA SPORTS has developed video games to bring the challenge and entertainment of sport to players around the world. This year, through a partnership with VTree LLC, EA SPORTS has developed a game that addresses and entirely different set of challenges, yet for very much the same results – bringing the [...]

Computer World
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced $1.85 million in funding for nine research projects involving the design of video-game technology to help people change behavior, manage chronic illness and improve communication. Among the projects that won funding: A study that will look at the effect of facial-perception video games on brain activity and facial-perception [...]

A new study out of Iowa State University finds that people who play video games for 40-plus hours a week have a harder time focusing on certain tasks than those who play just a few hours a week. The study also supports research published earlier this year that found a positive correlation between video game [...]

A research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has won $4.5 million in National Science Foundation grants to study the use of computer games for learning. UW-Madison researchers aim to create ‘computer-generated mentors’ and study gaming as an assessment tool.
The largest of the grants, for $3.5 million, will create a research consortium of three universities [...]

Vanderbilt University researchers found that a robot designed to interpret body signals is able to accurately read the mood of children with autism spectrum disorders more than 80% of the time. The robot measures the heart rate, skin temperature and other signals of children while they play a video game. If it determines the child [...]

Wiz World Online, developed by 8D World, helpes Chinese children learn English. Kids choose an avatar and pick a scene, like a castle in a fantasy land or a supermarket in the United States. They are confronted with challenges, like dodging flying monsters or buying fruit, all of which ask them to use English. If [...]

Researchers at the University of North Texas are studying the effectiveness of a computer simulation program, called simSchool, that is designed to prepare teachers for the modern youngster and help stem the flight of educators from the nation’s classrooms. Future teachers play what amounts to a game where they must respond to simulated classroom situations [...]

Video game researchers gathered June 23 to discuss ways gaming can help address the gaps in U.S. students’ educational performance, while also helping to improve their health.
Click here to read the full story from eSchool News.

Game Changer, a new report from the Joan Ganz Cooney at Sesame Workshop, offers a new framework to use games to help children learn healthy behaviors, traditional skills like reading and math, and 21st-century strengths such as critical thinking, global learning, and programming design. It specifies how increased national investment in research-based digital games might [...]

With support from the National Science Foundation, Duke University computer scientist Susan Rodger and collaborators nationwide are using the power of storytelling to draw younger students into programming. An animation program called “Alice,” invented by the late Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon University, allows student programmers of all ages to create their own worlds without [...]

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop unveiled its latest report, Pockets of Potential, at the Kids Play Summit at the 2009 International CES in Las Vegas.
More than half of the world’s population now owns a cell phone and children under 12 constitute one of the fastest growing segments of mobile device users. Industry [...]

Zula and IBM have collaborated to launch ZulaWorld, a science-focused, online educational gaming site with social interaction features.
Click here to read more from THE Journal.

Early childhood development researchers have discovered that a simple, five-minute self-regulation game not only can predict end-of-year achievement in math, literacy and vocabulary, but also was associated with the equivalent of several months of additional learning in kindergarten.
Click here to read the full story from Science Daily.

Sandra Day O’Connor is working on a civics education web site to be launched this summer. The 79-year-old justice has helped develop free web-based games to teach civics. O’Connor asserts that using technology is the way to teach students about the Constitution and inspire a renewed commitment to civics education in U.S. schools.
Two of the [...]

The Situated Multimedia Arts Learning Lab, or SMALLab, is made up of a floor mat, the trussing around it, and object-tracking cameras mounted on scaffolding around the space. These cameras collect data based on the students’ movements while immersing them in an educational experience through a video projector and speakers, which provide visual and audio feedback in real time. [...]

This paper looks at how computer and video-based epistemic games can help provide career preparation experiences for young people.

Recognizing the potential of neurofeedback as a tool for understanding the special symptoms of attention-related disabilities, SMART Braingames uses the latest neurofeedback technology advancements paired with a video game interface.