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Based on research not just opinion. What is it about games that is transcendent? Perhaps it's the fact that games are optional, they are obstacles that we volunteer to overcome. Games are what we choose to do. They are what we are drawn to when we have a choice about how to spend our time and energy.  Games are freedom.

Article with lots of links to research around the subject of games being good for us.

"...importance of "critical design," or "design for debate," which he defines as a way of using design as a medium to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions, and givens about the role products play in everyday life"

These are the 10 movies that will be playing in the secondary library during the week of the Global Issues Network (GIN) Singapore conference in November.

"In the Lego-like cubes that form the intricate world of MinecraftEdu, teachers find the building blocks of good digital citizenship."

Bastion is the first title from Supergiant Games, an original action role-playing game set in a lush imaginative world, in which players must create and fight for civilization's last refuge as a mysterious narrator marks their every move. Got a question about the game?

"Computer Gamers Help Push Frontier Of Brain Research"

Shot over a period of 18 months, Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti's project Toy Stories compiles photos of children from around the world with their prized possesions-their toys. Galimberti explores the universality of being a kid amidst the diversity of the countless corners of the world; saying, "at their age, they are pretty all much the same; they just want to play."

"We are deeply and fundamentally attracted, in fact, to games: those places where efforts and excellence are rewarded, where the challenges and demands are severe, and where success often resembles nothing so much as a distilled version of the worldly virtues of dedicated learning and rigorously co-ordinated effort."

instructions for all sorts of games, active games, board games, card games, classroom games, ice breakers etc

"Video games are just tools, outlets for people to express themselves in as vast a variety of ways as anything else. They are still relatively new creations, and the unknown can frighten anyone, hence the uproar that's followed games for years. The same uproar and indignation that followed rock and roll in the '50s and novels in the 19th century. This is why the Violent Content Research Act of 2013 is ultimately a good thing. It will lead to, ideally, a deeper understanding of how we interact with games. For parents, children, players, academics, and everyone else with a vested interest in a gaming future, the most important thing is to maintain perspective."

This could be kinda cool to play with.

"Children have infinite potential. Play is a natural vehicle for learning. Joy is most often found in simple things. Give children the space to create and the time to grow. Curiosity, imagination and creativity are timeless tools. Asking children questions is more powerful than telling them things. All children have basic needs, such as love and belongingness. Never underestimate the power of one caring adult in a child's life. Persistence, persistence, persistence pays off. Expect the unexpected. We need to strive to make learning transformational. There is a child in all of us."

iPads helping or hindering infants? http://t.co/hkiCAD9y via @canberratimes #mobilelead Dr Kaufman said the study, which had so far tested 46 children aged four to six, involved examining the attention and problem-solving capabilities of children after using an iPad compared to using real toys. For example, as part of the study, children are being asked to solve a problem using a physical wooden model. They are also asked to solve the same problem using an iPad app. After they have played, they are given a test to assess their attention. Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/digital-life/tablets/ipads-helping-or-hindering-infants-20120809-23xc9.html#ixzz2HdGhnTld

We know that the brain has a hugely important role to play in the students' learning that goes on in our classrooms. However, surprisingly, scientists still know relatively little about the workings of the brain, and most of what we do know has been discovered only in the last 15 years. Our challenge is to ensure that what we do know about the brain is translated into classroom practice and used to maximise student learning - this is the idea at the heart of Accelerated Learning. This unit introduces some of the principles of accelerated learning and explores techniques for you to try out with your pupils.

Today, worldwide, hundreds of millions of people play video games. The vast majority of those players are perfectly normal people, meaning that nothing newsworthy ever happens to them, but some small percentage of them are killers, some are extraordinarily depressed, some are suicidal; and every day some video gamer somewhere does something terrible or experiences something terrible. All this is also true of the hundreds of millions of people who don't play video games. 

Article from Psychology Today about whether video game addition occurs.

A introductory film for the new digital edition of The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, a classic book that has played a key role in the world's understanding of the Holocaust. The app takes the original text, published 65 years ago, and adds video interviews and other background material. The Diary of a Young Girl app, made by Beyond the Story, is available on iPad via Apple's AppStore