Share Paper: Building conceptual models through handheld game-play

  1. Loulou Bangura, EDC/Center for Children and Technology, United States
  2. Wendy Martin, EDC/Center for Children and Technology, United States
  3. Terri Meade, EDC/Center for Children and Technology, United States
Wednesday, March 7 5:15 PM-6:45 PM Capitol D

Abstract: Games can motivate students to pursue an activity repeatedly, and build mastery through their interactions with complex environments bound by detailed constraints and rules. Most importantly, games invite students to play—to become an active part of a dynamic system that encourages exploration and progress toward greater knowledge within the game world (Gee, 2007a, 2007b). In this poster, we will demonstrate how a game about photosynthesis and chemical change helped students in middle school science classrooms become familiar with important but difficult concepts through game play on the Nintendo Dual-Screen handheld game console (DSi). We will also show how it helped ...