Welcome to Zon! | Enter Zon: “By interacting in the Zon environment you will be exposed to Chinese language and cultural knowledge in a new and exciting way. Everything that you do in the game is another chance to learn new words, phrases and cultural info about China. Never before has learning Chinese been more fun.”

(Via OLDaily.)

PlayCrafter Lets You Play and Create Casual Games (The Startup Review): “PlayCrafter is a Flash-based website that lets users easily create a variety of 2D games. The games use physics and are created by dragging and dropping customizable game pieces. Users can upload their own graphics for all of a game’s pieces, including the background of the game. Creators can build upon the ideas of others by editing or personalizing existing games and discussing their games with the community. Games can easily be shared and posted to MySpace, Facebook or embedded on any website. Creators earn a share of revenues generated by their games.”

(Via Mashable.)

From Age of Empires to Zork: Using Games in the Classroom | Academic Commons: “With the remarkable growth in the gaming industry in recent years, educators have begun looking at games as a way of reaching students in this new digital world. While games have certainly been the target of criticism and even vilification in the popular media, many do possess qualities beneficial to education, such as the presentation of scenarios, problem solving, collaboration, and metrics.”