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= **Lessons from Video Game Learning** = = **Academic Conference at Fordham University** = = **October 7-10, 2010, New York City** =

This conference is designed to bring together leading researchers and practitioners from developmental and cognitive psychology, media, and game design to examine how learning transfers from video game play to the elementary and secondary school classroom. This issue remains largely unaddressed despite a growing body of literature linking video game play to improvement in spatial skills (Green & Bavelier, 2003; Greenfield, Brannon, & Lohr, 1994; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 1996), problem solving and inductive reasoning (Blumberg, 1998; 2000; Greenfield, Camaioni et al., 1994; Rosas et al., 2003), and attention (Green & Bavelier, 2003; 2006a). Invited conference attendees represent leading national and international researchers and practitioners in developmental and cognitive psychology, media, communications, and game design (See attached list of conference attendees). Talks and activities during the conference will address cognitive skills and content knowledge that children and adolescents acquire and refine during video game play; game features that captivate and promote skill development among game players; and evidence of skill and content knowledge transfer from video game play to the classroom context among game players of different ages. Discussion of these issues will then provide the basis for the culminating activity of the conference: specification of the most appropriate research agenda to investigate the academic potential of video game play, particularly using those games that child and adolescent players find most compelling. We also hope the conference will provide the basis for a new interdisciplinary community of researchers, practitioners who share a common interest in examining the ramifications of children’s video game play for academic learning.