My graduate research was on using interactive hypermedia to motivate
7th graders (done in 1998-99). My web site was the result of that
research. Here is an article that supports using technology to
motivate middle school students:
My research showed that the technology didn't improve learning - just
motivation to learn - as the students actually performed better
(higher scores) on the video worksheets than on the Internet lessons.
Students felt they were more motivated using the Internet over videos.
Students did perform better on the Internet lesson that was
hyperlinked than on the lesson where they had to type in URLs. Typing
the URLs for the lesson questions did cause a lot of frustration for
students - even the best (that I the reason I wanted to do a web site
with "click and go" questions).
I found that even though students were instructed to do the questions
in any order - answering those that appealed to them - the majority
still preferred to do them in order as written.