New Educational Videogaming Book Announced

A press release for a new educational videogame book came across the transom today. Children’s Learning in a Digital World initially seems to purport to delve into notions of negative effects surrounding violent videogames. However, the copy reads more along the lines of a much more positive take on educational videogames.

Video games, computers, and the Internet can provide opportunities for problem solving, creativity, and autonomy, and in particular, carefully constructed software can offer an alternative to traditional classroom learning. “Children’s Learning in a Digital World” is one of the first books to examine the impact of computers in both formal or school learning environments and informal learning contexts. It presents exciting and challenging new ideas from international scholars on the impact of computers, the Internet, and video games on children’s learning, as well as the social and cultural issues that affect technology use.

Here is the TOC:

Foreword: Seven Criteria for Investigating Children’s Learning in a Digital World by Richard E. Mayer

Pt. I Informal Learning with Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges

Introduction by Teena Willoughby and Eileen Wood

1 Media Literacy – Who Needs It? by Henry Jenkins

2 Good Videogames, the Human Mind, and Good Learning by James Paul Gee

3 How and What Do Videogames Teach? by Edward L. Swing and Craig A. Anderson

4 Videogame Addiction: Fact or Fiction? by Mark D. Griffiths

5 Meeting the Needs of the Vulnerable Learner: The Role of the Teacher in Bridging the Gap Between Informal and Formal Learning Using Digital Technologies by Laurence Peters

Pt. II Formal Learning with Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges Introduction by Eileen Wood and Bowen Hui and Teena Willoughby

6 Using Technology to Assist Children Learning to Read and Write by Philip C. Abrami and Robert Savage and C. Anne Wade and Geoffrey Hipps and Monica Lopez

7 Tools for Learning in an Information Society by John C. Nesbit and Philip H. Winne

8 Virtual Playgrounds: Children’s Multi-User Virtual Environments for Playing and Learning with Science by Yasmin B. Kafai and Michael T. Giang

9 Can Students Re-Invent Fundamental Scientific Principles? Evaluating the Promise of New-Media Literacies by Andrea A. diSessa

10 Domain Knowledge and Learning From the Internet by Malinda Desjarlais and Teena Willoughby and Eileen Wood

11 The Integration of Computer Technology in the Classroom by Julie Mueller and Eileen Wood and Teena Willoughby Summary and Looking Ahead

Addictive Group Play Might Make Johnny an Angry Boy

I found a nice site devoted to research on videogames from the psychology side. A lot of academic research on videogames seems to be deriving from psychology profs lately. Wai Yen Tang is a student who decided to start the VG Researcher – Psychology blog in “an attempt to bridge the gap between gamers and VG researchers in psychology. Another pertinent reason is that I’m simply tired of reading short and somewhat inaccurate news report on VG research (angers me a lot) and makes me want to read the article directly and write on it.”

I couldn’t agree more! As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, the media can put an entirely different spin on stories than what researchers published. VG Researcher is filled with several interesting entries, each devoted to a different paper. Several caught my eye, including this one:

Eastin, M. S. (2007). The influence of competitive and cooperative group game play on state hostility. Human Communication Research, 33 (4), 450-466.

Tang notes that Dr. Eastin took a novel approach to aggression research in videogames, finding higher levels of hostility measured among players who teamed together. I look forward to reading this one, as soon as I make it over to the university library. Alas, it’s not available freely online.

Also, this paper examined hostility in the context of “addiction”:

Grüsser, S.M., Thalemann, R., & Griffiths, M.D. (2007) Excessive computer game playing: Evidence for addiction and aggression? Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 1o, 2, 290-292.

Griffiths, Tang notes, is renowned for addiction research in the field of psychology. The study was an online survey of over 7,000 players, and noted that those meeting the researchers’ definition of addiction (11.9%) reported higher levels of aggression, “But regression analysis demonstrated that gaming addiction accounts for 1.8% for being responsible for aggression.” Tang concludes the connection between addiction and aggression seems tenuous.

Give Tang’s site a visit. I’ve added VG Researcher to the Blogroll.