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This isn't anything revolutionary, but it does come back to the core of gaming in education and good pedagogy in lesson planning, which is knowing your audience and planning around their needs and desires. "We launched two titles in October -- "Rockett's New School" -- the first of a series of products -- is about a character called Rockett beginning her first day of school in eighth grade at a brand new place, with a blank slate, which allows girls to play with the question of, "What will I be like when I'm older?" "What's it going to be like to be in high school or junior high school? Who are my friends?"; to exercise the love of social complexity and the narrative intelligence that drives most of their play behavior; and which embeds in it values about noticing that we have lots of choices in our lives and the ways that we conduct ourselves."

So we slowly encouraged him to participate in creating content around games. He began writing game reviews and learned how to build new levels for games. He started creating a real community around games and contributing to that knowledge space. He was blogging about games but also challenged himself to become a better writer. He was part of a group of gamers that decided they wanted to design and build a prototype game controller, and by working with our mentors, they learned about the principles of design and actually built a prototype.

This summer, when your kids' favorite science museum boasts a new augmented-reality environmental simulation? Same deal. If in the next few years a video game teaches you anything - how to conserve energy, eat a balanced diet or solve quadratic equations - consider the invisible hand of one of the most unconventional White House hires in recent memory.

PeaceMaker PeaceMaker challenges you to succeed as a leader where others have failed. Experience the joy of bringing peace to the Middle East or the agony of plunging the region into disaster. PeaceMaker will test your skills, assumptions and prior knowledge. Play it and you will never read the news the same way again.

Brock Dubbels' blog featuring research and news related to the use of video games for learning.

AnnBib resource

Mobile computing and game-based learning are two of the six major trends that will have a huge impact on K-12 learning in the next five years according to projections found in the New Media Corsortium's 2011 K-12 Edition of the Horizon Report (http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2011-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf)....

Eighth graders type furiously on the keyboards in a middle school computer lab. Their spirited online chat is all about appearances: Who looks gross? Who wants a makeover? Most teachers would ban this kind of digital discussion, but not health teacher Diane Whiting...

"I immediately understood the potential," Sheehy says. "In creating an avatar, students would have so many opportunities to reflect on the choices they make." The site allows teens to modify every aspect of their avatar's appearance, including body type, hair color, skin tone, and wardrobe. Talking about the choices the students were making was the logical next step for learning.

Peggy Sheehy's blog about her experiences with students in Teen Second Life.