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This article discusses how digital games like Minecraft can enhance reading and writing skills. Children enhance reading skills through reading manuals on how to play and create in the game. Games also contribute to writing skills when students post to gaming sites. Students are more motivated when they care about the task like playing the game.

This article is not based on educational games in particular, but is based on video games. There are benefits of playing video games and the author does a nice job summarizing these benefits.

This is an article written by a novelist and game writer. She argues that games, or digital literature, are effective storytelling devices and gives a lot of good example of games that are bridging the gap between narrative and game mediums.

"Imagine if kids poured their time and passion into a video game that taught them math concepts while they barely noticed, because it was so enjoyable," Bill Gates said. This article talks about what role games should play in the classroom.

I have long been a proponent of gaming in education, if for no other reason than the fact that I like video games, whether they are educational or not. I had the good fortune to have an opportunity to work for a short while with some individuals from MIT Education Arcade (although we couldn't get a product concept together), and this reinforced my belief that gaming has the possibiity of extending learning farther outside the classroom than has been seen in a long time.

This study from Pew Research Center offers a good look at just who in American culture plays digital games regularly. The statistics here might be surprising.

In this TEDx Talks video, Prof. Christopher See discusses what games and education have in common and how games can be used to increase student engagement.

This article comes from PSU's Education magazine. It's about bringing gaming into the K-12 classroom.

Great games that engage students in science

This website has a live thread of conversation from teachers all over the world discussing game based learning. Many teachers give great advice on what to try in classrooms and there are also videos and resources to use as well.

SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge, an educational version of the popular city-building video game, is a known quantity in a fresh wave of serious learning games that bridge the gap between instruction and assessment. These multimedia tools provide teachers with better assessment tools than written exams.

Basic games/videos teaching students about internet safety and other everyday issues. I feel that this site is geared towards younger students

A resource database for educational videos and games divided by subject and concept.

Resource for classrooms to practice digital citizenship, includes videos, games and real life statements for children.

This speaker does an excellent job showcasing that our students are totally capable of being part of a learning network before they can even recognize what it is they're doing. Things have changed intensely since the rise of networked connections between people. School needs to adapt and use these tools that professional educators are using to improve meeting the many "standards" that Mr. Regur talks about. "We have standards just to write standards…" We need to avoid the closed off island that is being a teacher… There is no longer an excuse to be stuck in this single-player version of education.

We all create personal learning networks in everything we do. Using this in education is extremely important so that students a) know how to connect with others, and b) know how to benefit from connecting with others. I like how he called the "teacher the most important activator".

Two is a meeting, Three is a network. Steve had some great "real" advice and reasons for why we should all join PLN for a variety of different reasons to create a stronger and more educated world.