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Lee, Luchini, Michael, Norris, & Soloway (2004) More than just fun and games: Assessing the value of educational video games in the classroom

The purpose of this article was to find whether educational video games could be integrated into a classroom in order to help both the teacher and the students. This article started by discussing the difficulties of introducing games into learning environments which includes having people see games as learning tools and not toys and also developing software that will have educational value. This article talked about the development of a game which was designed to help students become better at solving math problems. This game was then introduced into two classrooms, a total of 39 second graders, in which the teachers were free to incorporate the games however they wanted. One teacher used the game as a warm up activity and the other used it as a reward for students who completed their work early. The game was in the classrooms for nineteen days before the effects of the game were analyzed. After this the average amount of math problems solved per students was found and it showed that s...
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Mouaheb, Fahli, Moussetad, & Eljamali (2012) The serious game: What educational benefits?

The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of the serious game in learning. This article analyzed the game Virtual University in order to find the uses of the serious game. It was discussed that this type of game can be used by a variety of ages for various purposes. These uses are teaching tools, entertainment, and a technology of information and communication. After listing the uses of this type of game it was shown how these uses show up in Virtual University. It was discussed after this analysis that the serious game has educational values which have been based on learning concepts that were advocated for in several theories. In having these educational values it was stated that this type of game allows for intrinsic motivation, generates cognitive conflicts and provides situated learning. All of these things were shown in Virtual University. This article relates to Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Video Games because these both analyze the educational benefits of g...
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Kafai & Burke (2015) Constructionist gaming: Understanding the benefits of making games for learning

The purpose of this article is to determine the educational benefits of allowing children to design games. The article begins by synthesizing fifty-five studies regarding making games and learning. Through this synthesis it was found that most of these studies focused on using game making to teach coding and academic content but there were few studies regarding collaboration and identity in game making. The article then argues for the use of games for collaboration and identity. Making games helps to connect students to each other. It also brings up the issues of diversity and access. This doesn’t really relate much to the other articles because it’s about game making and not about game playing although there are some connections to the article Design of Educational Multiplayer Videogames: A Vision from Collaborative Learning because they both advocate for the enhancement of collaboration through games. The keywords for this article are: constructionist gaming, personal dimensions, soc...
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Rice (2007) Assessing higher order thinking in video games

The purpose of this article is to identify games that are beneficial for the classroom in terms of its educational benefits. The beginning of the article is about the lower level learning that takes place in edutainment (games meant for education) products. It examines what learning takes place and what is is not covered by games. The characteristics of highly cognitive virtual interactive environments are identified through examining these types of games. In order to help teachers as well as preservice teachers evaluate the games that they might consider using in their classrooms a rubric as well as an index are provided. These will help them to find how well the game encourages higher order thinking and thus determine how useful it would be in the classroom. At the end of the article an example is given of a social studies simulation that was designed to encourage higher order thinking and this game was evaluated. This compares to the articles Learning by Design: Good Video Games as ...
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Zea, Sanchez, Gutierrez, Cabrera, & Paderewski (2009) Design of educational multiplayer videogames: A vision from collaborative learning

The purpose of this article was to make collaborative learning techniques simpler with the introduction of educational video games. The researchers also worked to find how the academic guidelines impacted how the video game was developed. The author started through analyzing the use of video games in education and how games can enhance the learning process. It was then stated how this new technology of educational games could become more beneficial through developing games with the purpose of incorporating collaborative learning. There were guidelines for the designs in order to guide this project as it was meant to enhance collaboration in the classroom. These guidelines were about how the games should be designed and used. Through these guidelines the collaborative process was incorporated into the process of developing video games. The effects of these guidelines on the architecture of the video games were then analyzed. In order to test the effectiveness of this technique the aut...
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Rachels and Rockinson. 2018. The effects of a mobile gamification app on elementary students’ Spanish achievement and self-efficacy.

Rachels and Rockinson determine the effectiveness of an Spanish learning game Doulingo. The following is my annotation of their paper. This study seeks to compare a gamification app that provides Spanish language instruction called Duolingo and a traditional classroom environment in order to determine both method’s effectiveness at teaching elementary students spanish. By exposing two different groups of students to the different methods of spanish learning and then comparing the knowledge gained by the students through a test and learning scales, the study found there is no significant difference in the results of both learning processes. This led to the conclusion that Duolingo can be a useful tool in elementary level spanish acquisition, as it is effective as traditional face-to-face instruction. This study was performed at a private school in florida. It randomly assigned 2 third-grade classes and 3 fourth-grade foreign language classes to be taught spanish through duolingo inst...
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Gross (2007), Digital Games in Education

The purpose of this article was to analyze the gender differences in games and the ways in which popular games can be beneficial in an educational setting. The author divided this article into five parts in which the relevance of the research was introduced, how video games have changed over time, research on video games in education, approaches that could be used to introduce video games into education, and the problems that might arise in this introduction. It was stated that some games that take place in different eras in history can be useful as they contain information about the time period. The research was not only on computer games but much of what was found applies to computer games. There was little research on video games until the late 1990s. Many viewed video games negatively and it was not considered that they could be used in education. The main increase in research was on the structural aspects of games and the integration of games into schools. Over time many thought t...
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