Educational Gaming -- From Edutainment to Bona Fide 21st-Century Teaching Tool

How inspiring it is for educators (and parents) to know that what a child has mastered in these games, what they're curious about, what they ask for help on, and ultimately what they succeed in is not Super Mario Bros., but, for example, algebra! UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES Many of the educational video games today are built on principles espoused by such noted professors as James Paul Gee, the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University, and the author of the book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Multimodal Principle - [In a video game] meaning and knowledge are built up through various modalities (images, texts, symbols, interactions, abstract design, sound, etc.), not just words.