Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Gaming across the curriculum: Finding and evaluating educational games.

June 29, 2010 by marjee

This post shares resources from Trevor and my games workshop at ISTE 2010.

We kicked the workshop off with a brief talk. Here are the slides for that short presentation.

ISTE Gaming Presentation
View more presentations from tjowens.

Integrating Games in Instruction

•    Remember there are a lot of ways to introduce games in your classroom, you can start by simply recommending them to families, media resource leaders, or special educators
•    Make sure learning objectives can be met within the amount of time you have dedicated in the classroom period
•    When evaluating a game, consider how the game helps you meet learning objectives more effectively (more engaging? Better visual explanation? More efficient?)
•    Have a student volunteer help you evaluate games you consider.
•    Make sure you know the source of the game. Games on dedicated educational website from a familiar place are less likely to have unwelcome pop-ups or comments.

Learning Games Directories

Playing History:      Open directory of history and civics games
Playing Science:     Open directory of science games
Games for Change:     Directory of social issue games
Super Smart Games Wide range of free and commercial
PBS Kids Games:     Great  set of early childhood k-6 games
**NOTE: Many of these directories link out to external sites. Over time links may break and we have no control over the content of external sites.

Game Recommendations

Marjee Recommends
Coaster Creator
Students learn about potential and kinetic energy in order to build a successful roller coaster that provides riders with lots of thrills, but brings them to the end platform safely!

Gravitee 2
A “casual game” meant for entertainment but is an “addictive” and fun way to examine satellite/ falling body behavior.

Trevor Recommends
Do I Have A Right
From Justice Sandra Day O’Conner’s iCivics project, Do I Have A Right, does a great job helping students explore and understand the Bill of Rights.

The Jamestown Online Adventure Game
In this alternative history game students chose different strategies for the Jamestown pioneers. The Jamestown Online Adventure Game does a nice job helping students develop a sense of both what happened and why it happened.

Posted in classrooms, Presentations | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

We won CODIEs!

June 9, 2010 by marjee

We submitted our 3 energy unit games as one packet of games to the Software and Information Industry Association’s award for Best Educational Game.

This is very much an “its just nice to be nominated” situation. Winning was highly unexpected and a huge honor. I’m really proud of our energy suite of games as it highlights the most important learning objectives in a middle school energy unit using a variety of game mechanics that are all engage and all privilege engagement, learning, and classroom usability.

Check them out!

Best Educational Game 2010

Best Educational Game 2010

Posted in classrooms, Video games, Work | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

Classroom constraints & the pass-back effect: Games designed to transcend generational divides

May 27, 2010 by marjee

I am excited to be giving a talk today with Nina Walia as part of Games for Learning: Research and Design Innovation at NYU. It’s a quick talk, but I wanted to make sure those interested could take a look at our slides and dig into some of the links to games from our presentation.

Classroom constraints & the pass-back effect: Games designed to transcend generational divides

Play the Games I Mentioned Right Now:

Operation Resilient Planet, Mentioned on Slide 4: It is a big, 6 hr game. We also allow teachers to pick small 20-25 min experiences from the game to use in classrooms.
Transform-It and Energy City: Mentioned on slide 5: Free browser based flash games that provide a range of different challenges. Both have something you can do in 20 minutes in a class but provide hours of play later at home.
Coaster Creator and Eco Defenders. Mentioned on Slide 6: Both of these games provide spaces for direct classroom objectives, but also provide deeper experiences for players to try to best their own scores.
Here is an example of how videos model practices for classroom teachers. Mentioned in Slide 10:

You can log into the Jason Mission Center to browse some of these supporting classroom materials. Mentioned in Slide 11.

Posted in game design, Science, Video games | Leave a Comment »

Dads who know better and the powerlessness of pink

February 9, 2010 by marjee

A few weeks ago, the Pharyngula blog had a post about the powerlessness of pink. A toy catalog advertised microscopes and telescopes for kids and they included “special” pink ones “for” girls. The best part, of course, is that the pink ‘scopes were not as powerful as the regular microscopes (600x magnification vs. 900 or 1200x and 90x vs. 250 or 525x).

This is of course, lame for so many reasons and it carries various absurd implications, etc., but it isn’t all that unfamiliar for anyone who has reviewed the types of video games that are designed specifically for girls. For the most part, video games for girls are insipid. Check out the screen grab from the Tinkerbell DS game: outfits and material possessions. Really? Just about every/any game that has ever been designed for the pink ghetto has a clothing/ outfit fetish.

Oh good, this game has outfits in it! Phew! AmIRight?

Oh good, this game has outfits in it! Phew! AmIRight?

I can say a lot on this topic, but for now I just want to focus on one thing. Why stop at “outfits”? Why not go the next level?

What annoys me most about the girl-game outfit fetish isn’t necessarily that 1) all little girls don’t really care about outfits (and the second a video game box goes pink, I promise you outfits are involved, if not for your avatar than for a horse or puppy/kitty)  or that 2) the idea of having content revolve around outfits paralyzes any hope of designing a cognitively captivating game. Rather, what bothers me is that this interest some girls have in fashion or styling can link into some legitimately challenging and fascinating problem spaces, and this never seems to be taken advantage of. Fashion design, as Tim Gunn has shown us, is tricky business. It requires serious spacial intelligence, design thinking, and problem solving. Looking at two-dimensional patterns and fabrics and cutting and stitching them to fit onto a 3D person is an engineering feat if ever there was one. So why stop at just “outfits”?

In the more male-dominated game universes of racing games or god-game strategy games, successful titles frequently have sequels, and those sequels Continue Reading »

Posted in Featured, game design, Video games | Leave a Comment »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »