Happy 2010! I thought I would share a "page" I wrote recently for a "technology & education" collaborative book project. I used our conference and converstion as a starting off point. The article is here as PDF.

Further to the "Game Changer: Advancing in Digital Play to Advance Children's Learning and Health" study, included as resources in my article are two additional interesting studies done on digital games in education:

I. Moving Learning Games Forward: Obstacles, Opportunities & Openness: Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, and Katie Salen: The Education Arcade, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [2009] (http://www.educationarcade.org/)

II. Teaching with Games: Using commercial off-the-shelf computer games in formal education: Richard Sandford, Mary Ulicsak, Keri Facer and Tim Rudd, conducted in the UK by education innovator Futurelab with support from three of the world’s leading interactive entertainment software companies; Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Take Two, as well as the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) [2006] (http://www.futurelab.org.uk/projects/teaching-with-games)

At the November 6, 2009 meeting, during the 3rd panel on Education, we spent a bit of time discussing gaming and current trends in educational initiatives. I thought attendees might like to know about a report that came out June 2009 titled "Game Changer: Advancing in Digital Play to Advance Children's Learning and Health". This report is online at http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/pdf/Game_Changer_FINAL.pdf

As the foreword to the report notes:

As younger and younger children participate in our
ubiquitous media culture, researchers are debating
the impact of digital games on children’s learning and
development. As University of Wisconsin professor
Kurt Squire has written, “A generation of youth has grown
up with games. Yet we know very little about what they are
learning playing these games.”

Games designed for a variety of platforms, including
computers, televisions, and mobile devices, constitute a
huge and growing market, dominated by products mainly
for teens and adults. At the same time, we are now seeing
a marked proliferation of digital games aimed at young
children and “tweens.” Many are marketed as educational,
but as the Cooney Center’s 2008 report D is for Digital
concluded, parents, teachers, and other caregivers
often have difficulty gauging which games are effective
learning tools and determining how best to use them.

This was an excellent collaborative effort, tackling the challenge of archiving born digital materials, with a special focus on email.  The final report came out last year, but the site is still up.