Category Archives: Games and Learning

The following is an excerpt from Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to School and Emotional Learning by Matthew Farber and appears here courtesy of publisher Peter Lang.   In the early 1980s, video gaming often meant arcades, quick experiences designed to eat kids’ quarters. These games provided quick thrills, little in the way of nuanced emotion. Similarly, film was also fairly basic when introduced at the turn of the 20th century. Famously (at least according to legend), in 1895, the…

Billions of people around the world play video games, making gaming one of the most popular forms of entertainment today. Yet while we know there are many positive aspects to video games for learning and play, many still worry that they could also be bad for us. Video games have been accused of making players violent, isolated, dumb, or addicted. But what does academic research actually say? This is what I discuss in my most recent book, The Psychology of…

Every day, information is collected on our daily habits, from the groceries we purchase, the music we stream, the websites we visit, and even our physical locations. What happens to all this data? Some are sold for advertising purposes, some may be used for research, while other data is used by particular interest groups. It might be reported as line graphs, bar graphs, or heat maps. But how do we learn to read and accurately interpret the reality presented by…

At the XR for Change Summit in New York City in June 2019, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center hosted a cross-disciplinary panel of experts to discuss the potential impact and pitfalls of virtual reality (VR) in the classroom. Michael Preston, the Cooney Center’s executive director, kicked off the session with a call to take advantage of VR’s relative youthfulness to ensure that content and hardware developed for learning are beneficial and safe for children. The panel was moderated by David…

“For me, my kids playing Halo is no different than playing outside and coming up with scenarios that seem kind of violent like our kids… they could be outside playing Nerf guns and pretending to shoot each other and die. I can go outside and play Nerf guns with my kids and we can be playing in the neighborhood. And I don’t get questioned about that, but I get questioned about Halo.” —Abigail, a mother of four daughters Between the…

Imagine a room full of families gathered together around laptops. They’re making animations and games using computer programming. Many of the children or their parents are pointing at or touching the screens as they discuss storylines and game mechanics. As is often the case with technology, the children appear to be taking the lead, guiding their parents. The young experts sometimes maneuver their parent’s hand on the mouse, showing them where to click or what to drag-and-drop on the screen.…

How do we live together in a connected world? How do we cultivate “global citizens” who can relate to others—across international borders and Internet forums, or political aisles and bus aisles? These are increasingly pressing questions, and ones that are considered by two recent publications: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s Digital Play for Global Citizens, by Dr. Jordan Shapiro UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP)’s “The Limits and Strengths of Using Digital Games as…

Early this morning, I spoke to a friend in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Through my webcam, the Skype video was still a little choppy, but clear enough to recognize that we were each settled into different parts our daily routines (the time difference is six hours). I took sips from a big mug of coffee, the orange-yellow sunrise glaring in through the window to the right of my desk. For my friend, it was midday and he was nibbling on pita.…

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Game Design Special Interest Group recently held a Mentor “Ask Me Anything (AMA)” with Game Writers in conjunction with the National STEM Video Game Challenge. Teachers and students throughout the United States contributed questions about the process of writing original video games. The expert panel moderated by Felix Wilhelmy featured: Sheri Graner Ray, an award-winning game designer and CEO of ZombieCat Studios. Sheri has worked for such companies as Schell Games, Origin, Sony Entertainment, and the Cartoon…

The Interaction Design and Children Conference took place in June 2017 at Stanford University. The conference brought together a multidisciplinary community, focused on multiple aspects related to the design of technology for children. As part of the conference, we put together a workshop to discuss Joint Media Engagement (JME) as it relates to the development and consumption of apps for children and their caregivers and peers. We framed the discussion around previous theoretical work done on this topic. We also…