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Paul Anderson talks about how he changes his classroom into more of a video game to engage students.

You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like WhackAMole or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend's faces. You can even make use of the phone's sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone. But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android's text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud. To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app's behavior.

WOW! Very Scratch-like UI for programming Android mobile apps!!

This is an amazing, beautifully made and entertaining site for young children to learn phonic sounds. Design a monster and take it on an adventure around a magic area to find the letter sounds and fix a spaceship. The storyline is good and the activities are educational and motivational. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

Combining top quality games design with essential learning, the game is built on the principles of synthetic phonics and follows the teaching sequence of the Letters and Sounds.  Teachers can setup account and give access to students.

Article about high school game design classes.

This is a fun, cute, social 3D island world designed especially with children in mind. Children make an avatar and follow a quick tutorial and explanation of safety rules. The children can take their characters on quests, play educational games and interact with other users of the site. A fabulous feature of the site is that users are encouraged to 'make and do' offline as well. These activities can be uploaded to a scrapbook and multimedia blog. Offline activities also generate points in the game. The scrapbook is defaulted to private and no photos of children will be approved by moderators if the scrapbook is public. All the usual safety features are in place, including a 'report' and 'block' other users button. The basic account with most features is free, but there are optional 'paid for' extras. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Download this game where players must design the transport system for a city. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Educational+Games

A great, really well designed and free maths games website which is really fun to play. My class love it. A little time is needed to setup the logins, but well worth the effort. Also has a spelling game section. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

Make simple maze games with this useful resource. Add your own textures and pictures into your games. Discovered via @tishylishy. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

by Marc Prensky Our children today are being socialized in a way that is vastly different from their parents. The numbers are overwhelming: over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 10,000 hours talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high percentage fast speed MTV), over 500,000 commercials seen-all before the kids leave college. And, maybe, at the very most, 5,000 hours of book reading. These are today's ―Digital Native‖ students. 1 In Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Part I, I discussed how the differences between our Digital Native students and their Digital Immigrant teachers lie at the root of a great many of today's educational problems. I suggested that Digital Natives' brains are likely physically different as a result of the digital input they received growing up. And I submitted that learning via digital games is one good way to reach Digital Natives in their ―native language.‖ Here I present evidence for why I think this is so. It comes from neurobiology, social psychology, and from studies done on children using games for learning.

by Marc Prensky Our children today are being socialized in a way that is vastly different from their parents. The numbers are overwhelming: over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 10,000 hours talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high percentage fast speed MTV), over 500,000 commercials seen-all before the kids leave college. And, maybe, at the very most, 5,000 hours of book reading. These are today's ―Digital Native‖ students. 1 In Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Part I, I discussed how the differences between our Digital Native students and their Digital Immigrant teachers lie at the root of a great many of today's educational problems. I suggested that Digital Natives' brains are likely physically different as a result of the digital input they received growing up. And I submitted that learning via digital games is one good way to reach Digital Natives in their ―native language.‖ Here I present evidence for why I think this is so. It comes from neurobiology, social psychology, and from studies done on children using games for learning.

Hi. I wrote a paper about digital natives as part of an anthropology assignment for a doctoral course. Researchers from around the world have empirically proven that Prensky's theories are false. Additionally, while neuroscience has shown that brains do change as a result of neuroplasticity, to argue that it is generational is also a false claim. Though cognitive theory shows that learners bring their prior experiences to the interpretation of new educational opportunities - impacting attention and interpretation - all generations have had this occur. There is merit to the point that we should take learner's prior experience into consideration when designing instruction; however, Prensky's digital native claims may have done more to create tension between students and teachers than to provide instructional support. If you would like any of the scholarly studies, I have a published reference list at http://brholland.com/reference-list. Beth

Great article. Everyone should read Jerome Bruner's work.

Alternate Reality Games: Design, Development And Implementation (Part III)

Our students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

47 Principles of game design. Many (all?) can be applied to education.

What to do on a maker-workshop? Here some ideas for organizers. Make music with Makey Makey CNC cut marble track Program with Arduino Illustrate your dreams Build your own microscope and test the Berlin Water Quality A video game about the city's future development Grow roots and wings with Toywheel Furniture design with a laser cutter Dancing drones (a Dronenschwarm through a Web browser program) Robots upcycled A video game about the city's future development Kids have a dream Grow roots and wings with Toywheel

Designed for grades 3-5, the CYBERCHASE Lucky Star game show challenges kids to compete for top scores while building important math skills. This easy-to-install application engages students using the hugely popular characters from CYBERCHASE 

Treating a classroom like a video game.

This is a great iPad app which lets users design and play simple games by drawing the character and backgrounds. Download the app at https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/sketch-nation-studio/id506337826 http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

A well design maths game where two jellies battle it. Practise probablity, more/less than and size comparisons questions. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

Powerful interactive resources designed for whole-class teaching. Online educational games, classroom resources and lesson activities for interactive whiteboards and data projectors. Put some fun into your lessons with our exceptional science, maths, English language, literature, history, music physical education and modern foreign languages software." />/css/resourceList.css