What is Educational Mobile Games

The engaging, interactive power of digital games makes them a compelling tool for teaching and learning. With the emergence of mobile technologies into our daily life, mobile digital games start to gain attention from both researchers and educators. In this paper, the authors synthesize the existing literature on mobile digital games in the field of education. This review of the current state of educational mobile games indicates the following four strands. The first strand of literature focuses on exploring the attitudes of both students and educators towards mobile digital games in classrooms. The second body of literature addresses the educational values of mobile digital games. The third line of research focuses on ways to integrate mobile digital game design into current teaching and learning practices. Finally, some studies examine the specific challenges when developing mobile digital games both from designers' perspectives and educators' points of view. This article finishes with a discussion of the future direction of research related to educational digital mobile games.