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"Game-based learning is moving into the mainstream as more platforms become available and more educators recognize the benefits of increased student engagement and achievement. On top of that, research shows some interesting side benefits. For instance, surgeons who play video games are 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures and make 37 percent fewer errors than colleagues who don't play. Educators can incorporate game elements, such as rewards and engagement, into learning in two ways: games and gamification."

"The spread of online misinformation poses serious challenges to societies worldwide. In a novel attempt to address this issue, we designed a psychological intervention in the form of an online browser game. In the game, players take on the role of a fake news producer and learn to master six documented techniques commonly used in the production of misinformation: polarisation, invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, trolling people online, deflecting blame, and impersonating fake accounts. The game draws on an inoculation metaphor, where preemptively exposing, warning, and familiarising people with the strategies used in the production of fake news helps confer cognitive immunity when exposed to real misinformation. We conducted a large-scale evaluation of the game with N = 15,000 participants in a pre-post gameplay design. We provide initial evidence that people's ability to spot and resist misinformation improves after gameplay, irrespective of education, age, political ideology, and cognitive style."

"A computer coding game is a really fun way to introduce the basic concept of computer coding to young kids. Even better if you make it a superhero computer coding game! Plus you don't actually have to have a computer, so it's a cool tech-free idea. This homemade coding game was pretty easy to set up and can be played with over and over again with any type of pieces. Use superheroes,LEGO, My Little Ponies, Star Wars, or whatever you have to learn a little about programming."

"Award-winning educational software publisher Terasoft, a. s., today is pleased to announce the release and immediate availability of Action Sight Words Games & Flashcards for Reading Success for iPhone and iPad from its new professional series aimed at early reading improvement. Featuring a total of 6 engaging games with over 300 high-frequency English words from the popular Dolch Sight Words List, the Action Sight Words Games application makes learning vocabulary and spelling fun and easy for young learners."

"For some reason, educational games are getting an increasingly bad rap. Educators are questioning their merits on social media. Studies are popping up saying they don't help. Psychologists are cautioning parents about impact on attention span. Part of this could be over-inflated expectations. If we expect a game to teach children anything other than what that games simulates, we're setting ourselves up for disappointment."

"Teaching with video games is not what you think. Unless you recognize video games as an increasingly engaging, compelling, and interactive narrative form that is seeking to leapfrog film as the medium of choice not just for teenage boys who like Call of Duty, but, well, you too. And that teaching with them means taking as close a look at the creation and design of the stories and play mechanics and the interaction between story and player as you do the narrative itself. Which can act as a kind of schema to inform how you teach novels, poetry, government or science-as-inquiry."

"Why Minecraft? Every day, more and more teachers are using the world-building game Minecraft to engage and educate. The game is a true phenomenon and gamers young and old are using it in countless creative ways. Practitioners of Games Based Education have realized the potential and have embraced Minecraft in classrooms around the world. Now you can too! What is MinecraftEdu? MinecraftEdu is the collaboration of a small team of educators and programmers from the United States and Finland. We are working with Mojang AB of Sweden, the creators of Minecraft, to make the game affordable and accessible to schools everywhere. We have also created a suite of tools that make it easy to unlock the power of Minecraft in YOUR classroom."

"If you frequently purchase apps and games on your iPhone or iPad, you may find yourself running out of space or cluttering up your Home screen with icons you barely launch anymore. Most people say they don't delete apps and games in fear of not being able to get them back. Luckily, thanks to iTunes in the Cloud, part of iCloud, you can easily re-download any apps or games you previously purchased whenever you'd like at no additional cost to you."

"More teachers are using digital games in the classroom, and they're using them more frequently, according to a new teacher survey just released by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. But more surprisingly, the study reveals that teachers are finding that one of the most impactful use of games is for motivating and rewarding students, specifically those who are low-performing. The survey, which interviewed 694 K-8 teachers with an average of 14.5 years of teaching experience, aims to understand how and why teachers are using digital games in the classroom."

Science of the Olympic Winter Games Photo of ice skater, words Science of the Winter Olympic Games, and logos of NBC Learn, NSF and Vancover Olympics NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, has teamed up with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to produce Science of the Olympic Winter Games, a 16-part video series that explores the science behind individual Olympic events, including Downhill and Aerial Skiing, Speed Skating and Figure Skating, Curling and Hockey, and Ski Jumping, Bobsledding and Snowboarding. This groundbreaking project between the NSF and NBC Learn uses the global spotlight of the Olympics to make science more accessible and more interesting to students by showing how science helps athletes fulfill the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius--Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Read more about the "Science of the Olympic Winter Games."

"I grew up on a healthy regimen of Choose-Your-Own Adventure books, Nintendo, and role playing games, but even I am intimidated by the new brand of interactive storytelling that is flooding the iPad. More designers are exploring how the frenzy around Apple's tablet computer is evolving e-books into something new. Sure, you can find traditional children's picture books directly translated onto the iPad that simply let you flip through on a touchscreen, but there's so much more the medium allows. Embedded games, interactive backgrounds, responsive audio, non-linear stories - "books" on the iPad have become something much better: immersive experiences. I've got a host of videos to show you what I mean, check them out below. Combining games, books, music, and voices in compelling ways, these early attempts to revolutionize storytelling on the iPad are exciting…but they're just the beginning. Give it a few years and the lines between these different ways of telling stories will blur so far we'll have to come up with a new name. 'Books' just doesn't cut it anymor"

" Games can be fun and addicting. Well-designed educational games can make the act of learning just as fun and addicting. Here are some teacher-tested games to engage your learners and get them craving more. Parents may like these for holiday enrichment too."

"Maths is one of the most fundamental skills that any child needs to succeed at school and life in general. Make the learning less of a chore by implementing gaming elements into the learning process. Lots of kids chose to play these games even knowing that they are maths based. That says something about the concept on which these types of games have been developed. See if any might be suitable for your class or perhaps just for one or two struggling students."

"Educational games, or "edutainment," can sometimes be presented as "chocolate-covered broccoli"-that is, learning sugarcoated with fun.  An example is a game that tasks players with reducing fractions to destroy aliens.  Here, the mechanics of play (actions taken in a game) are misaligned with the learning goal. In the past few years, innovative designers smartly began marrying game mechanics to learning goals.  One example is The Land of Venn, in which the mechanic of drawing points, lines, and shapes clearly correlates to the game's goal.  Players draw lines to learn about line"

"The other day, I noticed one of my daughters playing a puzzle type game on my iPad. It was obviously challenging and often frustrating but she kept at it regardless. The game was direct problem solving and my girl was deeply engaged. It was then I had an idea. If any learner who found themselves disengaged from a school task had permission to select from a list of problem-solving, "brain igniting" games, it might mean they return to the task more energised to tackle it or suggest other solutions."

"Thanks in part to STEM education initiatives and the tech boom, coding in the classroom has become more ubiquitous. Computer programming tasks students to persistently work to solve problems by thinking logically. What's more, learning how to code is a desired 21st century career skill. There are several digital games designed for kids as young as 5 that turn coding into a fun activity, such as Kodable and Scratch Jr. But some game designers are going further back to programming's fundamentals by creating physical games that can't be found in any app store."

"In the past decade, researchers have shown that playing games can boost students' ability to think in systems. Any game is a system, after all, and when players take actions, the game itself, as an interactive system, can change. Moving a knight across a chessboard, for example, can change everything for the opposing player. What is systems thinking? According to the Partnership for 21st-Century Learning, systems thinking relates to critical thinking and problem solving, and systems thinkers can "analyze how parts of a whole interact with each other to produce overall outcomes in complex systems.""

"Can technology help kids develop empathy? Due to the rise of virtual reality experiences, there's been some buzz lately about the impact technology might have on how we understand and share the feelings of others. Since video games have an inherent ability to transport us to places and meet people we normally wouldn't, teachers can use them to create authentic experiences in their classes - where students reflect on their own lives, share personal stories with peers, and hopefully begin to share in the perspectives of others. Games can't be the sole tool to help build empathy, but emotional and powerful moments in games can drive meaningful discussions in the classroom."

"A couple of years ago I featured Jeopardy Rocks. Recently, Jeopardy Rocks changed its name to Factile and added some more features. At its core Factile is a free platform for creating Jeopardy-style game boards to use in your classroom. Factile lets you create games and save them in your account to use whenever you need them. When you create your game you can include images in the answer display. One of the new features is a gallery of templates for creating games. You can browse the template gallery and make copies of the ones that you want to use in your classroom."