Gen X and Digital Games: Looking back to look forward

Despite there being increased attention in recent years to older adults who actively play digital games, it seems that there has been comparatively minimal scholarly focus on the next generation of older adult gamers – Generation X gamers. Although there have been few, current audience studies that examine this population within a gaming context, a temporal perspective reveals another story. Older members of this generation were the first age cohort to be exposed to and engage in video gameplay at an early age (i.e., childhood). With the emerging popularity of video games in the 1980s, this did not escape the attention of scholars. This study provides an overview of those early studies that assessed video game use and its potential (for better or worse) among the older members Gen X. The study themes identified include: health, education, and behavior. In addition, the first studies that identified gaming characteristics of this generation in their formative years emerged in the latter half of that decade. By identifying themes in these early studies, scholars have the potential to track an entire generation’s gaming history and characteristics from childhood to present day. Ultimately, this may glean richer insight into those qualities when they become the next older generation of digital game players

Young Children and the Arts: Making Creative Connections -- A Report of the Task Force on Children's Learning and the Arts: Birth to Age Eight

Provides guiding principles and recommendations to organizations to support the development of arts-based early childhood programs and resources

Location-based and contextual mobile learning. A STELLAR Small-Scale Study

This study starts from several inputs that the partners have collected from previous and current running research projects and a workshop organised at the STELLAR Alpine Rendevous 2010. In the study, several steps have been taken, firstly a literature review and analysis of existing systems; secondly, mobile learning experts have been involved in a concept mapping study to identify the main challenges that can be solved via mobile learning; and thirdly, an identification of educational patterns based on these examples has been done. Out of this study the partners aim to develop an educational framework for contextual learning as a unifying approach in the field. Therefore one of our central research questions is: how can we investigate, theorise, model and support contextual learning

The Influence of Video Games on Adolescent Brain Activity

The current study examined electrical brain activation in adolescent participants playing three different video games. Forty-five school aged children (M=14.3 years, SD=1.5) were randomly assigned to play either a violent game, non-violent game, or a non-violent game specifically designed to train the brain. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded during video game play. Results revealed an asymmetric right hemisphere activation in the alpha band for participants in violent game group, while those in the non-violent groups exhibited left hemispheric activation. Greater right activation in emotion literature denotes signs of withdrawal or avoidance from undesired stimulus. Implications of this finding as well as other findings related to electrical brain activation during video game play is discussed further in the manuscript

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

The Efficacy of Using Augmented Reality Technology to Develop Multiple Intelligences for Children in Early Childhood

The current study aims to measures the effectiveness of using augmented reality technology to develop multiple intelligences in children in early childhood. The semi-experimental method was used with one group (pre and post). The research was applied to (30 children) from kindergarten children. Their ages ranged between (5-6) years. The study used the following materials and tools: a program based on the use of augmented reality technology to develop multiple intelligences in children in early childhood, a measure of multiple intelligences (linguistic - social - logical-mathematical - personal - natural intelligence) among children in early childhood (prepared by the researchers), and the study reached the following results: the effectiveness of using augmented reality in the development of multiple intelligences in children in early childhood, where the experimental group in the pre-application obtained an average of (13.97), while in the post-application it got an average of (25.80). The pre-application had a general average of (2.87), while it got an average of (5.13) in the post-application. The post-test has an average of (5.27), the effectiveness of using augmented reality technology in developing social intelligence Where the experimental group in the pre-application obtained a general average of (2.73), while in the post-application it got an average of (5.20). The post application has an average of (5.07) the effectiveness of using augmented reality technology in developing natural intelligence, where the experimental group in the pre application got an average of (2.73), while in the post application it got an average of (5.13), in the light of the results of the study, the researchers presented several Recommendations for the development of multiple intelligences in children in early childhood, which are: directing those in charge of preparing kindergarten curricula to include augmented reality technology in kindergarten curricula, directing the interest of kindergarten teachers, using augmented reality technology in developing multiple intelligences in children in early childhood, directing kindergarten teachers the diversity of methods and strategies used to develop multiple intelligences in children in early childhood

Children's use of home computers from a cultural psychological perspective

This thesis adopts a cultural psychological perspective on children's use of computers at home and, as a contrast, in the classroom. It utilises various methodologies to investigate the actual uses that children make of computers in these settings and also focuses on how computing practices are situated within the local ecology, or context. Seventy-six 7-, 9- and 11-year-old pupils from five socially and ethnically diverse primary schools were interviewed in their schools. In addition, thirty-three families with children of comparable ages, from the same five schools, participated in a detailed study of the ecology of home computing. Findings suggest that, although parents had high educational aspirations for the ways in which their children would use a new computer, these aspirations were not met in reality. Entertainment games predominated and educational software was used comparatively little. This thesis explores why this was the case and finds that it was the differing ecologies of the home and the classroom that mediated the different uses that were found in either setting. [Continues.