GTEL&S 2013 - International Conference on Digital Game and Digital Toy Enhanced Learning and Society (GTEL&S)

Digital games and digital toys are cultural artifacts of today’s youth, and the development of these more recent forms of technology continue to outpace our scientific understanding of how these technologies can best be harnessed for educational benefit. This conference seeks to advance the research community’s understanding of the efficacious design, construction, and real world implementation of the use of digital games and toys to facilitate learning in both formal and informal learning contexts. Multiple perspectives on this endeavor are invited, including perspectives from pedagogy, educational philosophy, the sociology of learning, learning design, game and toy design and construction, and real world implementation and evaluation in informal and formal learning scenarios. How current research efforts can advance learning in the 21st century, especially amongst digital youth, will be of special interest to the conference.
Topics of interest to the GTEL&S conference will include but not be limited to the following:
Learning foundations and design theory
Pedagogy
Support for Informal and Formal Learning
Case studies and exemplars
Empirical and formal evaluations
Naturalistic studies
Multiplayer and social games
Location-based games and ubiquitous technologies
Mobile, casual, and online games
Identity and role-play
Virtual characters and avatar representations
Game narrative
Virtual storytelling
Play and enactment
Engagement, emotion, and affect
Collaboration and community-based learning
Use of social media
Social and cultural dimensions of learning
Entertainment robots and digital toys for education
Artificial intelligence in games and toys
Simulation and animation
Interface design
Multi-sensory interfaces
Wii-like somatic forms of learning, including in sports and training contexts
Game and toy use in classrooms
Interaction techniques for learning with games and toys
Physical interactions and embodiment through games and toys
We welcome contributions that report on accomplished research as well as work in progress.