Research On Children's Virtual Community Based On Educational Game

Childhood should be the most memorable time in one's life. However, because of the popularity of the television, Internet, polarization of rural and urban area, one-child policy and utilitarianism, Postman (1982) and other scholars said childhood is disappearing. This paper starts at the phenomena of the disappearance of the childhood and the development of children virtual community. Then, it analyzes the causes and characteristics of the disappearance of childhood. It also provides examples of children virtual community which is a hot issue in China. Since the main discussion of this paper is about children virtual community of educational game, in the second chapter, there is a literature review on the concept of education game. Moreover, it uses Piaget's cognitive development, the stage of assimilation and accommodation, to analyze the nature of educational game. In chapter three, it emphasizes children virtual community has become an important platform of recent educational game research by stating the characteristics, spirit, definition and development of educational game. Also, it discusses the recent situation of children virtual community in China in detail. In the next chapter, using the Learning Village invented by The Chinese University of Hong Kong as an example, it analyzes the characteristics, learning strategies and effects of children virtual community.So far, educational game and children virtual community are still developing. We are lack of sufficient theories of educational game and theories of learning. Also, we do not provide perfect examples to illustrate the power of educational game. Therefore, there is a long way to go to do our research. However, we believe that children can benefit from the virtual community created by the Internet through our effort.