Who I am
I’m the manager of publishing and technology for The Smithsonian Institution’s Smithsonian Science Education Center, where I’m working to launch a new curricular product to align with the Next Geneartion Science Standards as well as create and connect science teachers with useful digital resources. In my previous work, I created educational science games for the Jason Project with National Geographic, and worked on an online professional development program for teachers for PBS. I’m finished my PhD at George Mason University where I specialized in educational research and evaluation methods. My thesis was a content and discourse analysis of science videos on TeacherTube.Recent GeekCrafts posts
Category Archives: Featured
Dads who know better and the powerlessness of pink
I don’t necessarily lay all of the blame on the 4th tier game designers who are clearly out-of-the-loop regarding the specifics of sugar and spice that little girls are made of. Parents buy these games and I find it revealing that if a girly game is ever bagged in a review, the review comes from a father Continue reading
Posted in Featured, game design, Video games
Leave a comment
Designing games as Vernier Probes
Gee argues that games, unlike schools, offer deep, meaningful, and somewhat inefficient learning experiences. This is in contrast to schools, where we go for shallow and aim for efficiency. Standards, for instance, are all about efficiently know which kids will know what key information by when.
So realistically, what does that mean about the games we design for schools? Continue reading
Posted in classrooms, Featured, game design, usability, Video games
Tagged design, Gee
Leave a comment