Parenting Step Children with Special Needs | Different Dream

Jan 28, 2013 Posted by Jolene on Jan 28, 2013 in Family Life, Featured Articles | 0 comments

Parenting step children isn?t easy. Step parents have been getting a bad rap since Cinderella?s story first hit the press. But Donna Thompson?s post at her blog The Caregiver?s Living Room shines a different light on the subject of parenting step children with special needs.

Parenting Step Children Interview

In her post Caring for Step Children, Donna shares a step parent interview first published at BLOOM, an online magazine for special needs families. (BLOOM is published in Canada, and it?s worth a look. It?s loaded with resources and a variety of perspectives about parenting kids with special needs.) In the interview?Louise Kinross, the creator of BLOOM, talks with Canadian Olympic rower, Silken Laumann.

Silken Laumann Parenting Experience

In the interview, Silken talks about her own blended family. The family includes her husband?s daughter Kilee, who experiences autism and sometimes displays challenging behaviors. She is very transparent about the challenges of being Kilee?s step parent. In the interview, she identifies the challenges of the first few months of the transition, how her discipline strategies had to change, how they avoided making family life all about Kilee, how she?s come to see beyond her step daughter?s special needs, and how she?s learned to slow down and see more positives in every day life.

The entire interview is worth a read at Caring for Step Children. While you?re at Donna?s site, take a look around. She addressed many aspects of caregiving in her different posts. Thought-provoking stuff.

What Parenting Challenges Have You Experienced?

What about you readers who are step parents to children with special needs? What are your greatest challenges? How do you deal with them? What supports would make life easier?

On the other hand, what joys are part of your parenting experience? What have you learned from your step child? How has your perception of kids with special needs changed? Your comments and stories can help people understand how to help and encourage you. Thanks in advance!

Source: http://www.differentdream.com/2013/01/parenting-step-children-with-special-needs/

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Kenya elections observers to enhance transparency

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ? Kenya's first nation-wide vote since devastating violence broke out after the nation's 2007 presidential election will be closely monitored by the international community and local observers to help ward off potential problems, officials said Monday.

The disputed 2007 presidential election sparked off ethnic fighting that killed more than 1,000 people, and observers warn there is an unacceptably high risk of repeat violence around Kenya's March 4 vote. A chaotic primary vote this month and outbreaks of deadly violence around the country have done little to instill confidence that peace will prevail.

Kenya's election commission says at least 1,014 international observers and more than 10,000 local observers have been accredited. The United States said it will field a team of about 105 observers.

"We hope our ongoing engagement on electoral preparations combined with the presence of election observers from the U.S. government, international partners, and Kenyan groups before and during the election will help ensure that the electoral process is free, fair and peaceful, thereby giving the Kenyan people confidence in the legitimacy of election results," U.S. Embassy spokesman Christopher Snipes said.

The U.S. is encouraging Kenyans to put aside tribal and ethnic differences, reject intimidation and violence, demand an end to impunity and to address any electoral disputes through Kenya's courts, rather than on the streets, Snipes said.

The European Union observer team will be smaller in number than in 2007 ? 70, down from 132 ? but will spend more time in the country analyzing the buildup to the vote, said Gillian McCormack, deputy head of the EU observer mission.

Kenya has introduced political reforms to address the flawed 2007 polls. A new constitution passed in August 2010 has put checks and balances on government bodies. The constitution also established a robust Supreme Court and initiated judicial reforms that have resulted in more than a dozen higher court judges being fired over lack of integrity.

A report this month by the Council on Foreign Relations listed several reasons to fear violence might reoccur: the country's top presidential candidates are mobilizing voters along ethnic lines; the vote is likely to be very close; the election commission will be unable to fully prepare for the election; and one presidential candidate faces trial at the International Criminal Court for violence perpetrated after the 2007 vote.

"The United States and others may have limited leverage over Kenya's domestic politics, but they are not without options that would significantly improve the prospects for acceptable elections and help avert a major crisis," the report said. "However, with little more than two months before the elections, Washington must intensify its engagement or forsake its opportunity to make a difference."

The U.S. is financially supporting observers from the Carter Center ? run by former President Jimmy Carter ? and the largest Kenyan group of observers, said Snipes.

The International Crisis Group said in a recent report that high youth unemployment and inequality encourage the growth of criminal groups and militias who want to intimidate political opponents.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kenya-elections-observers-enhance-transparency-103508146--politics.html

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Preparing for a Perfect Storm

?Barack Obama and John Boehner made nice for the inauguration, but more fights loom on the debt ceiling and fiscal cliff.

Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images

The global economy this year will exhibit some similarities with the conditions that prevailed in 2012. No surprise there: We face another year in which global growth will average about 3 percent, but with a multispeed recovery?a subpar, below-trend annual rate of 1 percent in the advanced economies, and close-to-trend rates of 5 percent in emerging markets. But there will be some important differences as well.

Painful deleveraging?less spending and more saving to reduce debt and leverage?remains ongoing in most advanced economies, which implies slow economic growth. But fiscal austerity will envelop most advanced economies this year, rather than just the Eurozone periphery and the United Kingdom. Indeed, austerity is spreading to the core of the Eurozone, the United States, and other advanced economies (with the exception of Japan). Given synchronized fiscal retrenchment in most advanced economies, another year of mediocre growth could give way to outright contraction in some countries.

With growth anemic in most advanced economies, the rally in risky assets that began in the second half of 2012 has not been driven by improved fundamentals, but rather by fresh rounds of unconventional monetary policy. Most major advanced economies? central banks?the European Central Bank, the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the Swiss National Bank?have engaged in some form of quantitative easing, and they are now likely to be joined by the Bank of Japan, which is being pushed toward more unconventional policies by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe?s new government.

Moreover, several risks lie ahead. First, America?s mini-deal on taxes has not steered it fully away from the fiscal cliff. Sooner or later, another ugly fight will take place on the debt ceiling, the delayed sequester of spending, and a congressional ?continuing spending resolution? (an agreement to allow the government to continue functioning in the absence of an appropriations law). Markets may become spooked by another fiscal cliffhanger. And even the current mini-deal implies a significant amount of drag?about 1.4 percent of GDP?on an economy that has grown at barely 2 percent over the last few quarters.

Second, while the ECB?s actions have reduced tail risks in the Eurozone?a Greek exit and/or loss of market access for Italy and Spain?the monetary union?s fundamental problems have not been resolved. Together with political uncertainty, they will re-emerge with full force in the second half of the year.

After all, stagnation and outright recession?exacerbated by front-loaded fiscal austerity, a strong euro, and an ongoing credit crunch?remain Europe?s norm. As a result, large stocks of private and public debt remain. Moreover, given aging populations and low productivity growth, potential output is likely to be eroded in the absence of more aggressive structural reforms to boost competitiveness, leaving the private sector no reason to finance chronic current-account deficits.

Third, China has had to rely on another round of monetary, fiscal, and credit stimulus to prop up an unbalanced and unsustainable growth model based on excessive exports and fixed investment, high saving, and low consumption. By the second half of the year, the investment bust in real estate, infrastructure, and industrial capacity will accelerate. And, because the country?s new leadership?which is conservative, gradualist, and consensus-driven?is unlikely to speed up implementation of reforms needed to increase household income and reduce precautionary saving, consumption as a share of GDP will not rise fast enough to compensate. So the risk of a hard landing will rise by the end of this year.

Fourth, many emerging markets?including the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), but also many others?are now experiencing decelerating growth. Their ?state capitalism??a large role for state-owned companies; an even larger role for state-owned banks; resource nationalism; import-substitution industrialization; and financial protectionism and controls on foreign direct investment?is the heart of the problem. Whether they will embrace reforms aimed at boosting the private sector?s role in economic growth remains to be seen.

Finally, serious geopolitical risks loom large. The entire greater Middle East?from the Maghreb to Afghanistan and Pakistan?is socially, economically, and politically unstable. Indeed, the Arab Spring is turning into an Arab Winter. While an outright military conflict between Israel and the U.S. on one side and Iran on the other side remains unlikely, it is clear that negotiations and sanctions will not induce Iran?s leaders to abandon efforts to develop nuclear weapons. With Israel refusing to accept a nuclear-armed Iran, and its patience wearing thin, the drums of actual war will beat harder. The fear premium in oil markets may significantly rise and increase oil prices by 20 percent, leading to negative growth effects in the U.S., Europe, Japan, China, India and all other advanced economies and emerging markets that are net oil importers.

While the chance of a perfect storm is low, any one of them alone would be enough to stall the global economy and tip it into recession. And while they may not all emerge in the most extreme way, each is or will be appearing in some form. As 2013 begins, the downside risks to the global economy are gathering force.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=5e33e5c985958da451ff4594a4a85f3e

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Exploring the Origins of the Common Core ? Diane Ravitch's blog

Jim Martinez decided to research the sources of the Common Core State Standards. Given their importance as a redesign of the nation?s highly decentralized education system, we can expect to see many more such efforts to understand the origins of this important document.

?Engaging the nonsense ? a brief investigation of the Common Core?

A teacher asked me where the Common Core came from, another suggested that I ?teach? the Common Core in my Master?s degree level courses.

So my curiosity got the best of me and I spent some time understanding something about Common Core from my perspective as a scholar and educator.

My first discovery is that the Common Core is a political document. That may seem fairly obvious, but what I mean is that there is an identifiable political ideology and history that has contributed greatly to the current document. I?ve attached a link to document that led me to this conclusion.
http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards ? English Language Arts Appendix A

This document contains references to supporting representative research for the Common Core. As I read the document something caught my eye, it was the following quote from Adams (2009)

??There may one day be modes and methods of information delivery that are as efficient and powerful as text, but for now there is no contest. To grow, our students must read lots, and more specifically they must read lots of ?complex? texts?texts that offer them new language, new knowledge, and new modes of thought??

This bothered me. I don?t agree with the statement and so I decided to read Adams (2009) I did a Google search and found this:

http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/adams.htm ? The Challenge of Advanced Texts:The Interdependence of Reading and Learning.

From the text I figured out that Adams is a heavy weight in reading and literacy circles (pun intended) there?s just a style of writing and authoritative stance that gives you clues, I then looked her up in Wikipedia to confirm my suspicions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Jager_Adams

If you read the article you find that not only is she a heavy weight, she is politically connected as in, inside the room when policy decisions are made.

I Googled a little more and came to this document.

http://www.niu.edu/cedu_richgels/PDFs/Adams1991.pdf

It?s a critique on her work in the 1990s that refers to her government directed research on phonics instruction. The critique and her response are very informative. It took me a couple of hours to find these documents and read parts of them and I think I found some answers to some questions and was provoked to some other thoughts that I will share with you now.

Common Core includes in it?s history, No Child Left Behind and other national educational policy reports dating back to A Nation At Risk (1983). It?s important to remember that most research is government funded and so it is unfair to critique educational research for it?s funding source. However, it is absolutely fair to question who gets to decide what the research is about and how that research is presented and used.

I happened to pursue a line of inquiry that involved Adams (2009) but there were many other researchers cited (Beck and Mckeown, vocabulary development, are notable as well) in the Common Core. I disagreed with Adams and I wanted to explore the source of the disagreement, the critiques helped clarify my understanding of my disagreement. The critiques also provided valuable insights on the theoretical framework Adams uses in her research. I still disagree with her, but I am respectful of her efforts. Which brings me to my next point.

There are many researchers cited in the Common Core, with many research agendas, using many methodological approaches across many disciplines. There is no cohesive theoretical framework or agreement on what constitutes the best approaches from a scientific research perspective to teaching and learning being represented in the document. Critics of the representative research in the Common Core abound. Some of the representative research consists of laboratory trials with small numbers of students, some include longitudinal studies and some of the research includes significant limitations that should be considered carefully when considering the claims that are made in the research.

Given the ambition of a national educational policy it seems that the best policy makers could come up with are some ?best practices? that have achieved some success. It is very helpful to publicize that kind information, however, we have to ask: Is it useful to claim that a patchwork quilt of research underlying a set of standards is a framework for a solution to the educational challenges this country faces?

When teachers are asked to implement standards that they feel ?do not make sense? it is not that teachers are simply ignorant and require professional development, it is in my opinion, the initial reaction of a person engaged in a craft/practice that is highly dependent and responsive to local conditions.

The Common Core standards are derived, in part, from an abstraction (the patchwork quilt of research) and are being pushed on to practitioners. The research strands that I examined tended toward the notion that knowledge acquisition is the endgame of school-based learning. I would not be surprised if that were true of many of the other research strands as that sentiment is pervasive in education.

Knowledge acquisition learning is about remembering and being able to manipulate abstract knowledge. We determine that a student has acquired knowledge by testing or providing a task that can only be completed if the individual has the requisite skill or knowledge. The Common Core is intended to set the standard for this type of learning and so there must be tests. Let?s set aside for the moment that the standardized tests we already use are not calibrated to the Common Core. If we believe in an educational system that prioritizes knowledge acquisition in the service of a national security agenda (economic competitiveness, technology dominance, etc.) then testing is necessary.

We experience the consequences of this priority in classrooms every day. I don?t have to detail them here.

If we believe that education is about more than knowledge acquisition, and that national security can be achieved through other concepts such as healthy communities, sustainable resource uses, national unity, world peace, or the elimination of hunger and poverty. Then we need to take responsibility for our practices, assert our own understandings of those practices, expose those practices to peer-review and challenge ?what does not make sense? collectively.

I am finding that engaging the ?nonsense? has been a good learning experience.

Thoughts and comments are welcomed.

Source: http://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/27/13491/

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Kourtney & Kim Take Miami Recap: Breast Milk, Fresh Out the Boob

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/01/kourtney-and-kim-take-miami-recap-breast-milk-fresh-out-the-boob/

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Internet Article Marketing Insight from a Pro: How to ... - E-junkie.info

Even though many say it's old hat and that search engines like Google don't like it, I still use article marketing quite effectively to market my products (eBooks) and services (SEO writing company) online.

How Effective Has Article Marketing Been for Me

Well, it's kept me on the first page of Google for many keywords relevant to my niches. For example, if you google the phrases "SEO writing"; "what is SEO writing" and "sell eBooks online" (without quotes) ? all keyword phrases that are relevant to my online businesses -- I'm on the first page as of this writing.

Note: Search results change all the time, but I've consistently been on the first three pages of Google for these keyword phrases since 2009-2010. And it's all because article marketing is one of the most consistent weapons in my online marketing arsenal.

What Is Article Marketing?

For those who may be new to internet marketing, article marketing is when you write an article and submit it to article directories so that others can publish it -- for free -- in their newsletter, on their blog / website, in their off-line newspaper, etc.

Why would you give away free content? Because at the bottom of each article is a resource box (ie, "About the Author" section) where you have a link to your website/blog/online store, etc. This drives traffic back to your site.

And, just how much is this traffic worth ? especially if you can parlay it into a first-page listing on Google?

How Much Is a Listing on the First Page of Google Worth?

Apparently, a lot. According to the SeoPledge.com article, How Much Is First Page Google Worth?:

If you able to perform some SEO on your site and move to #10 from #11 you should see a 143% jump in traffic. . . . As you move up the first page, the jumps do get larger.

Where to Submit Articles

As mentioned above, you submit articles to free article directories. There are hundreds of them (just?Google?"article directories" to find a list. FYI, EzineArticles.com is the number one rated article directory on the web. It can be cumbersome to get an article approved there, but it's worth it ? especially if you submit on a regular basis. I've submitted close to 400 articles to this site over the years.

Article Marketing ? The Reason I Sell 5 Figures Worth of eBooks Per Year

I sell four figures worth of eBooks per month (five figures per year). And my number one eBook marketing tactic is article marketing. Now that I've hopefully convinced you of how effective article marketing can be, following are four things you can do to make it effective in 2013 ? and beyond.

4 Effective Article Marketing Strategies for 2013

1. Say Something: As in, write BENEFICIAL information. Article marketing is just another form of content marketing, which means dispensing helpful information to assist web surfers in making an informed buying decision.

Many get frustrated with article marketing; saying it "doesn't work."

Baloney!

It works ? if your article is helpful, meaning you can't just throw together a 300- or 400-word article of generic information that can be found all over the web. That type of info doesn't work; it doesn't move consumers to buy.

But if you invest some time into writing clear, concise, helpful articles to distribute, not only will they generate sales, you'll get greater distribution because prospective publishers will come to rely on the fact that you dispense great info.

2. Write Longer Articles: I remember when an article only had to be 250 words or so to be distributed by article directories. Now, most of them require an article to be at least 400 words. Mine tend to be in the 400 to 600-word range.

FYI, I started my own article marketing directory last year. The link to it is in my bio below; there are tons of samples there.

3. Don't Keyword Stuff: Search engines like Google are moving away from rewarding keyword stuffed content to rewarding what's known as themed SEO content. So, strive for a keyword density of only between 1-2%.

4. Create/Leave a Web Footprint: With Google's emphasis on "Authorship," it's more important than ever to create/leave a footprint on the web. This way, search engines know who you are ? and can reward your content. One of the quickest ways to develop/leave a web footprint is via social media.

So, create and start interacting on social media ? especially the biggies like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus.

I got on the first page of Google recently for a keyword phrase I'd been trying to rank for for at ?least six months (SEO content writing) ? all because I shared a piece of content with that keyword phrase in it via my Google Plus profile. Now, I'm in two spots on the first page of Google for this phrase. Go figure!

Article Marketing: Conclusion

You'll come across a lot of negative stuff about article marketing on the web ? especially since Google's Panda and Penguin updates.

SEO Article Marketing: Over 1,000 Articles Written!

Once I learned how to write SEO content in 2007, I upped my article marketing game because knowing SEO is like having the keys to the online marketing kingdom. I've been using this form of online marketing since 2002, and have written over 1,000 articles to promote my own products and services (and a few thousand more for clients via my SEO writing company's article marketing services).

In short, hands down, article marketing is some of the most effective internet marketing you can do. And the best part of all ? it's free!

Author Bio:
Yuwanda Black is an online entrepreneur who has written and distributed over 1,000 articles. Get free articles for reprint at YuwandaBlack.com. Content covers a wide variety of topics, eg, selling eBooks online, freelance writing, internet marketing, SEO writing, etc. Learn everything you need to know to earn four figures per month online using article marketing.?

Source: http://www.e-junkie.info/2013/01/internet-article-marketing-insight-from.html

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The DeanBeat: Game acquisitions rise 23 percent to $3.4B in 2012 ...

During 2012, gaming continued its worldwide expansion toward billions of gamers as new platforms such as tablets and smartphones took off. But that growth was tempered against financial hardships such as the decline of Zynga?s social gaming revenues. That led to a collapse in Zynga?s stock price that deflated the social gaming bubble and hurt valuations.

Those countervailing forces affected the year in game acquisitions and investments. Acquisitions saw a boom year, rising 23 percent to more than $3.477 billion spent on game companies, compared to $2.827 billion a year earlier. But the number of deals declined and?investments fell off.

Of course, if we knew the value of every deal, the numbers would be much higher this year. But we have the same problem every year as the majority of the deals keep the values secret. 2012 saw 58 game-related deals, compared to?77?in 2011, according to original research by GamesBeat?with contributions from Sana Choudary of YetiZen, Tim Merel of Digi-Capital, Internet Deal Book, and Electronic Arts. The average deal size (where values were disclosed) was $60 million, compared with $36 million from a year earlier.

Acquisitions and disruption go together. Deal valuations are building because traditional game companies and major entertainment brands are adapting to the major shift away from the consoles toward social, mobile, and online gaming. And the barriers between social casino games and real-money online gambling companies are falling. With the prospect of legalization in the U.S. driving up values, casino games were hot in 2012. More disruptions are happening as game companies adopt new business?such as free-to-play games, where users play for free and pay small amounts for virtual goods.?Gaming also has its own version of the war for talent as big companies acquire smaller ones.

Zynga slowed down its acquisitions from its torrid pace of one per month, but it still bought nine companies during the year. Japan?s Gree stepped up its acquisitions of mobile game studios as it tried to expand ahead of rival DeNA into the U.S. market. Many game companies raised money through crowdfunding, obviating the need to sell out to larger rivals. Electronic Arts paused to digest its $1.3 billion purchase of PopCap Games from 2011.

As far as initial public offerings go, the only stand-outs were?China?s YY, which raised $81.9 million in November, and London?s Zattika, which went public and acquired three companies. Microsoft was curiously absent from the acquisitive companies. That?s very odd for a company that is preparing to launch a new video game console sometime soon.

Here?s a look at the deals of the year. We?ve organized them by dollar value of the transactions. For those deals where the value was not disclosed, we have listed them in reverse chronological order. We have linked to our own VentureBeat/GamesBeat stories where we covered them. For deals, we didn?t cover, we have linked to other publications or press releases.

1. Nexon bought 14.7 percent of massively multiplayer online game publisher NCsoft for $688 million. This was a private transaction where Nexon purchased shares owned by Taek Jin Kim, chairman and founder of NCsoft, publisher of titles such as Guild Wars 2, Aion, Lineage II and Wildstar. By comparison, last year?s top deal happened when?Electronic Arts bought?PopCap Games for up to $1.3 billion, including $550 million that depended on performance targets.

2. China?s ZheBao Media bought GameABC.com from online game publisher Shanda Games for 3.18 billion renminbi, or $503.8 million.

3. International Gaming Technology paid $500 million?for Double Down Interactive. This deal in early 2012 signaled the beginning of the bubble around social casino games, just after the Justice Department ruled that online gambling could be legalized in the U.S. if states pass laws allowing it. That opened the door for synergy between gambling companies like slot machine maker IGT and social gaming companies like Double Down, which had just 70 employees. IGT?s?latest quarterly report shows that its social casino game revenues are still growing.

4. Nexon bought Gloops for $486 million. This deal may go down as the most money ever paid for a mobile gaming studio (at least so far). Nexon cut its teeth on free-to-play online games such as MapleStory, but it went public in 2011 and has cash to burn. It spent some of that on NCsoft, and it also bought Gloops, a developer based in Japan. Gloops is known for its JapanPro Baseball Card Battle and Warriors of Odin games.

5. Sony acquired Gaikai for $380 million. While Gaikai had almost no revenue, this deal signaled the arrival of cloud gaming as a contender. It was accompanied soon after by the collapse of cloud gaming leader OnLive, whose assets were sold for a pittance. Sony hasn?t said what it will do with Gaikai. But by offering cloud games on its next console, it could certainly disrupt its own $60 disc-based console game business. Better for Sony to do that than somebody else.

6. Gree paid $210 million for Funzio. Gree?s move came in the spring, when the bubble around games was still inflating and the company was aggressively trying to break into the U.S. mobile games market. Funzio seemed to have cracked the code with hit games such as Modern Combat and Kingdom Age. The Japanese company was generating more than a billion in revenue from its mobile social gaming network, and it was betting that U.S. mobile gamers would behave the same way. By the end of the year, Gree was still acquisitive, but it was also laying off staff.

7. Zynga bought OMGPOP for $180 million, plus more if the company hit is targets. But OMGPOP?s Pictionary-style hit game Draw Something fell apart just as Zynga closed the deal. Zynga had to write off $95 million of the deal?s value before the year was over. Still, the social gaming giant justified the deal as a big investment in the mobile market.

8. Gree bought collectible card game maker Pokelabo for $173 million. Pokelabo created digital collectible card games such as Mystic Monsters for iOS and Android. This deal took place in October, after Zynga?s struggles were clear and game investments were on the decline. As such, the high dollar amount shows that Gree wasn?t deterred by a small hiccups in the game market?s investment cycle.

9.?NCsoft acquired 76 percent of Korean casual game developer Ntreev Soft for $96 million. Korea?s NCsoft saw the move as a chance to shore up its casual game expertise. It was in talks with SK Telecom to buy the stake for months. Ntreev makes the online golf game Pangya and the massively multiplayer online game Trickster.

10.?PlayPhone paid $51.5 million for mobile marketing firm SocialHour. This stock-based deal positioned mobile social gaming network PlayPhone to offer non-incentivized cross promotions for games on its network.

11. China?s?ZheBao Media bought CGA.com.cn from Shanda Games for $49.1 million.

12. Wargaming bought BigWorld for $45 million. Wargaming is printing money with its World of Tanks online game, which has 45 million registered users for its 3D tank combat game. BigWorld builds middleware to create massively multiplayer online worlds.

13.?Amaya Gaming bought Ongame Network for $32 million. Bwin.party sold off its business-to-business online poker network to Amaya Gaming in the online gambling market.

14.?Glu Mobile paid $28 million in stock to acquire?Griptonite Games in Kirkland, Wash., as an expansion into free-to-play games.

15. China?s Rekoo paid $20 million for the acquisition of social gaming firm HappySNS.

16.?KongZhong purchased Noumena Innovations for $15 million. China?s KongZhong is expanding its online game presence in Asia and acquired Noumena, the maker of the smartphone mobile-game engine Handymo.

17.?Big Fish Games acquired Self Aware Games for $12 million. The move was a relatively inexpensive way for casual game market firm Big Fish to dive into the social casino gaming market, which stayed hot for most of 2012.

18.?Glu Mobile bought?Blammo Games in Toronto as a further expansion into mobile games. The deal was worth around $4.5 million in stock.

19. Zynga bought social game maker Wild Needle for an undisclosed price. A source told us the deal was valued at $3.8 million.

Here?s our list of deals where valuations were not revealed, in reverse chronological order.

19. Aeria Games merged with Japan?s Gamepot, as the companies created PC and mobile game powerhouse.

20. Arktos took a majority stake in Hammerpoint Interactive, creator of The War Z downloadable game.

21. Corona Labs acquired mobile cloud services startup Game Minion.

22.?Kabam bought Balanced Worlds to gain a 3D social game development team in China.

23. Zynga bought November Software as it maneuvered to become a bigger player in mid-core games, which are hardcore in nature but can be played for a shorter time.

24. Disney picked up LucasArts, the venerated game publisher, as part of its $4 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm.

25. Saban Brands acquired kid-friendly online video and gaming site Zui.

26. Electronic Arts bought online game development studio ESN. ESN developed the Planet web-based games framework and had been working on the Battlelog online social network for Battlefield 3.

27. Zynga acquired midcore social game startup A Bit Lucky, maker of Lucky Train.

28. Gree acquired mobile game developer App Ant Studios as the Japanese company continued its expansion in the U.S.

29. Playsino made its move into casino games with the acquisition of Popover Games.

30. And on the same day, Playsino announced its acquisition of Foghorn Games.

31. NaturalMotion acquired Boss Alien as it harvested the fruits of its 3D iOS games.

32. Epic Games acquired People Can Fly to stop its talent from flying out the door. That was one of the few console-PC deals of the year.

33. Saban Brands bought Zombie Farm game maker The Playforge.

34. Glu Mobile acquired GameSpy Technology from IGN as a move into multiplayer gaming technology.

35. Mobile ad network Tapjoy bought the core team of social gaming network startup Viximo.

36. Aeria Games assimilated three major online shooter games owned by Ijji.

37. Downloadable games firm?Green Man Gaming and social gaming network Playfire merged.

38. Roadhouse acquired social-mobile game maker The Embassy Interactive.

39. Kabam acquired Wild Shadow Studios, the maker of the 2D shooter game Realm of the Mad God.

40. Zynga picked up Buzz Monkey, a team with console gaming experience on titles such as Army of Two: 40th Day.

41. Japan?s Klab acquired social game company Pikkle.

42, 43, 44. Zattika buys three social game firms after its initial public offering. Zattika bought Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, and Concept Art House.

45. Kabam lifted Gravity Bear, a maker of social games such as Battle Punks.

46. Angry Birds maker Rovio bought its fellow Finnish game firm Futuremark Games Studio.

47. King.com bought Fabrication Games as it pushed beyond social games into mobile.

48. Otoy acquired Refractive Software as part of a move to create cloud-based digital animation and gaming tools.

49. Z2Live swallowed Big Sandwich Games, maker of the mobile game Battle Nations.

50. Peak Games acquired Saudi Arabia?s Kammelna as part of a move to go big with social games in the Middle East.

51. Linden Lab acquired LittleTextPeople for some new development talent.

52. Kabam purchased Fearless Studios, led by former Star Wars game developers.

53, 54, 55, 56. Zynga bought four mobile game companies: Gamedoctors, Page44 Studios, HipLogic, and Astro Ape Studios.

57. 6waves Lolapps acquired mobile game maker Escalation Studios.

58.?Ascend Acquisition Corp. merged with mobile gaming firm Andover Games in a reverse acquisition.

Source: http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/25/the-deanbeat-game-acquisitions-rise-23-percent-to-3-4b-in-2012/

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