"McGonigal's remarks included a bevy of interesting facts about gaming, as well as a group play exercise - what she called "massively multiplayer thumb wrestling" - and peeks at two of her recent alternate reality games: EVOKE (2010), a "crash course in changing the world"; and Find the Future (2011), which challenged 500 student authors to write a book in one night while inside the New York Public Library.
Here are five key things McGonigal wanted ISTE 2013 attendees to know about gaming and education:"
"Play is positive; gaming is good; and online engagement has begun supplying a generation with the love and feelings of connection that all humans crave.
Some 7 billion hours a week are being poured into to this alternate world of engagement through online games. And 25 percent of Call of Duty players call in sick the day a new version the game comes out.
These amazing and concerning facts paint a picture of the new world of gaming, said Jane McGonigal, who delivered the opening keynote address Wednesday at the FETC 2015 conference in Orlando, FL. The first person to earn a Ph.D. in the study of the effects of gaming, she is director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future, a non-profit research group in Palo Alto, CA."