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Deborah Baillesderr

Gamestar Mechanic - 46 views

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    Play, design and share games.  Focuses on game design
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    a very popular web-based game design environment. Global Kids http://olpglobalkids.org/ is using it to run social benefits game design contests and badging programs. They are getting 100+ new game design entries per week. From the parents' guide: Gamestar Mechanic is currently supported by a partnership between the Institute of Play and E-Line Media. The game was originally developed by Gamelab in partnership with the Institute of Play and the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab (AADLC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Initial funding for the game and companion learning guides came from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The design of the game is based on research by some of the leading academics in the field including Katie Salen (Executive Director of the Institute of Play and curriculum author for the New York City Public School Quest To Learn) and James Paul Gee (author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy).
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    This site has students creating games from scratch and putting them out into the world for feedback within the Gamestar Mechanic community. Students use math, problem solving, writing skills and more to make their games interesting. I think this could be used in the classroom as a theme-based project or just to get students interested in coding.
Joe Virant

Does Easy Do It? Children, Games, and Learning - 29 views

  • The kind of product I shall pick on here has the form of a game: the player gets into situations that require an appropriate action in order to get on to the next situation along the road to the final goal. So far, this sounds like "tainment." The "edu" part comes from the fact that the actions are schoolish exercises such as those little addition or multiplication sums that schools are so fond of boring kids with. It is clear enough why people do this. Many who want to control children (for example, the less imaginative members of the teaching profession or parents obsessed with kids' grades) become green with envy when they see the energy children pour into computer games. So they say to themselves, "The kids like to play games, we want them to learn multiplication tables, so everyone will be happy if we make games that teach multiplication." The result is shown in a rash of ads that go like this: "Our Software Is So Much Fun That The Kids Don't Even Know That They Are Learning" or "Our Games Make Math Easy."
  • What is worst about school curriculum is the fragmentation of knowledge into little pieces. This is supposed to make learning easy, but often ends up depriving knowledge of personal meaning and making it boring. Ask a few kids: the reason most don't like school is not that the work is too hard, but that it is utterly boring.
  • game designers have a better take on the nature of learning than curriculum designers. They have to. Their livelihoods depend on millions of people being prepared to undertake the serious amount of learning needed to master a complex game. If their public failed to learn, they would go out of business. In the case of curriculum designers, the situation is reversed: their business is boosted whenever students fail to learn and schools clamor for a new curriculum!
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • watching kids work at mastering games confirms what I know from my own experience: learning is essentially hard; it happens best when one is deeply engaged in hard and challenging activities.
  • The preoccupation in America with "Making It Easy" is self-defeating and cause for serious worry about the deterioration of the learning environment.
  • I have found that when they get the support and have access to suitable software systems, children's enthusiasm for playing games easily gives rise to an enthusiasm for making them, and this in turn leads to more sophisticated thinking about all aspects of games, including those aspects that we are discussing here. Of course, the games they can make generally lack the polish and the complexity of those made by professional designers. But the idea that children should draw, write stories and play music is not contradicted by the fact that their work is not of professional quality. I would predict that within a decade, making a computer game will be as much a part of children's culture as any of these art forms.
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    Dr. Seymour Papert describes ways in which gaming enhances learning. June, 1998.
Adrienne Michetti

Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as "Third Places" - 52 views

    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      This is, I think, why I'm more keen on today's social networks than I am on games -- games do not provide deep emotional support.
  • "bowling alone" hypothesis (Putnam, 2000), which suggests that media are displacing crucial civic and social institutions
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Putnam - need to check this article. Interesting; not sure I agree.
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  • According to Putnam, time spent with relatively passive and disengaging media has come at the expense of time spent on vital community-building activities.
  • The evidence to date is mixed
  • A core problem on both sides of the debate is an underlying assumption that all Internet use is more or less equivalent
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      SO True
  • It would be more plausible and empirically rigorous, then, to consider how specific forms of Internet activity impact civic and social engagement as a result of their particular underlying social architectures
  • combining conclusions from two different lines of MMO research conducted from two different perspectives—one from a media effects approach, the other from a sociocultural perspective on cognition and learning.
  • By providing spaces for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function as one form of a new "third place" for informal sociability much like the pubs, coffee shops, and other hangouts of old.
  • loosely structured by open-ended narratives
  • They are known for their peculiar combination of designed "escapist fantasy" and emergent "social realism"
  • from two research projects: one an examination of the media effects of MMOs, the other an ethnographic study of cognition and culture in such contexts.
  • the conclusions of both studies were remarkably aligned.
  • the assumption that the most fruitful advances are sometimes made when congruent findings are discovered through disparate means
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Love this quote.
  • demonstrate the "effects" of game play vs. no game play.
  • first project was a traditional effects study
  • second project, a qualitative study of cognition and learning in MMOs (
  • ethnography
  • sociocultural perspective
  • as a way to tease out what happens in the virtual setting of the game and how the people involved consider their own activities, the activities of others, and the contexts in which those activities takes place
  • a reasonable level of generalizability (random assignment to condition in the first study) and contextualization (ethnographic description of existing in-game social networks and practices in the second)
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      but I wonder why he chose these games -- this is not specified. Only their success in US and abroad?
  • brick-and-mortar "third places" in America where individuals can gather to socialize informally beyond the workplace and home
  • the exaggerated self-consciousness of individuals.
  • In what ways might MMOs function as new third places for informal sociability?
  • virtual environments have the potential to function as new (albeit digitally mediated) third places similar to pubs, coffee shops, and other hangouts.
  • in this section we analyze the structural form of MMOs that warrants this "third place" assertion.
  • eight defining characteristics of third places
  • there is no default obligation
  • To oblige any one person to play requires that explicit agreements be entered into by parties
  • the default assumption is that no one person is compelled to participate legally, financially, or otherwise.
  • Unless one transforms the virtual world of the game into a workplace (e.g., by taking on gainful employment as a virtual currency "farmer" for example, Dibbell, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006a) or enters into such agreement, no one person is obligated to log in
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      and this is why, in my opinion, you will never see games in school. The game cannot be the Third Place because school is a Second Place.
  • Yee's (2006) interviews also reveal that individuals who game with romantic partners or family find that such joint engagement in the "other world" of MMOs allows them to redefine the nature and boundaries of their offline relationships, often in more equitable terms than what may be possible in day-to-day offline life
  • the relationships that play-partners have with one another offline are often "leveled" within the online world
  • an individual's rank and status in the home, workplace, or society are of no importance
  • appeal to people in part because they represent meritocracies otherwise unavailable in a world often filled with unfairness
  • conversation plays an analogous role
  • "In all such systems, linguistic interactions have been primary: users exchange messages that cement the social bonds between them, messages that reflect shared history and understandings (or misunderstandings) about the always evolving local norms for these interactions" (p. 22).
  • third places must also be easy to access
  • such that "one may go alone at almost any time of the day or evening with assurance that acquaintances will be there"
  • accessible directly from one's home, making them even more accommodating to individual schedules and preferences
  • barriers to initial access.
  • "What attracts a regular visitor to a third place is supplied not by management but by the fellow customer,"
  • "It is the regulars who give the place its character and who assure that on any given visit some of the gang will be there"
  • affective sense
  • As one informant satirically commented in an interview, "You go for the experience [points], you stay for the enlightening conversation.
  • engendering a sense of reliable mentorship and community stability.
  • Oldenburg argues that third places are characteristically homely, their d�cor defying tidiness and pretension whenever possible. MMOs do not fit this criterion in any literal sense
  • In neither of our investigations did the degree of formality exhibited by players within the game bear any relation to the degree of visual ornamentation of the players' immediate vicinity.
  • Thus, while the visual form of MMO environments does not fit Oldenburg's (1999) criterion of "low profile," the social function of those environments does.
  • Oldenburg (1999) argues that seriousness is anathema to a vibrant third place; instead, frivolity, verbal word play, and wit are essential.
  • The playful nature of MMOs is perhaps most apparent in what happens when individuals do bring gravity to the game.
  • the home-like quality of third places in rooting people
  • Participation becomes a regular part of daily life for players and, among regular gamemates such as guild members, exceptional absences (i.e., prolonged or unforeseen ones) are queried within the game or outside i
  • create an atmosphere of mutual caring that, while avoiding entangling obligations per se, creates a sense of rootedness to the extent that regularities exist, irregularities are duly noted, and, when concerning the welfare of any one regular, checked into
  • Are virtual communities really communities, or is physical proximity necessary?
  • Anderson (1991), who suggests that geographic proximity itself is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for the emergence and preservation of "community."
  • Social capital (Coleman, 1988) works analogously to financial capital; it can be acquired and spent, but for social and personal gains rather than financial
  • operates cyclically within social networks because of their associated norms of reciprocity
  • bridging social capital is inclusive.
  • This form of social capital is marked by tentative relationships, yet what they lack in depth, they make up for in breadth.
  • On the one hand, bridging social capital provides little in the way of emotional support; on the other hand, such relationships can broaden social horizons or worldviews, providing access to information and new resources.
  • bonding social capital is exclusive.
  • social superglue.
  • it can also result in insularity.
  • shows that bridging and bonding social capital are tied to different social contexts, given the network of relationships they enable.
  • Virtual worlds appear to function best as bridging mechanisms rather than as bonding ones, although they do not entirely preclude social ties of the latter type.
  • One could argue that, if the benchmark for bonding social capital is the ability to acquire emotional, practical, or substantive support, then MMOs are not well set up for the task:
  • While deep affective relationships among players are possible, they are less likely to generate the same range of bonding benefits as real-world relationships because of players' geographic dispersion and the nature of third places themselves.
  • Despite differences in theoretical grounding and methodologies, our conclusions were remarkably similar across complementary macro- and micro-levels.
  • It is worth noting, however, that as gamers become more involved in long-term social networks such as guilds and their activities become more "hardcore" (e.g., marked by participation in large-scale collaborative problem-solving endeavors such as "raids" into difficult territories or castle sieges), the function of MMOs as "third places" begins to wane.
  • It may be, then, that the structure and function of MMOs as third places is one part of the "life cycle" for some gamers in a given title.
  • In such cases, MMOs appear to enable a different kind of sociability, one ostensibly recognizable as a "community" nonetheless.
  • However, our research findings indicate that this conclusion is uninformed. To argue that MMO game play is isolated and passive media consumption in place of informal social engagement is to ignore the nature of what participants actually do behind the computer screen
  • Perhaps it is not that contemporary media use has led to a decline in civic and social engagement, but rather that a decline in civic and social engagement has led to retribalization through contemporary media (McLuhan, 1964).
  • Such a view, however, ignores important nuances of what "community" means by pronouncing a given social group/place as either wholly "good" or "bad" without first specifying which functions the online community ought to fulfill.
  • Moreover, despite the semantics of the term, "weak" ties have been shown to be vital in communities, relationships, and opportunities.
  • is to what extent such environments shift the existing balance between bridging and bonding
  • In light of Putnam's evidence of the decline of crucial civic and social institutions, it may well be that the classification "lacking bridging social capital" best characterizes the everyday American citizen. T
  • Without bridging relationships, individuals remain sheltered from alternative viewpoints and cultures and largely ignorant of opportunities and information beyond their own closely bound social network.
  • it seems ironic that, now of all times, we would ignore one possible solution to our increasingly vexed relationship with diversity.
Jon Tanner

Jesse Schell's mindblowing talk on the future of games (DICE 2010) « fox @ fury - 54 views

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    Here is an interesting (and very entertaining) presentation at game designer conference, talking about the way game design is invading the real world. It's a fascinating look at future possibilities, including the intentional influence on school and society- making people behave better through game design. Be warned, he uses some words that are inappropriate for school.
Maryann Angeroth

Critical-Gaming Network - Game Design 101 - 62 views

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    "if you're looking for an entry point into the level of discourse within the Critical-Gaming Network, a place to start developing your critical-eye, or seeking a crash course in game design then here is where you start."
Martin Burrett

Maths Games - from Mangahigh.com - 132 views

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    A fantastic maths games website which has games designed to practise particular skills in maths. There's blasting robots for the boys and picking flowers for the girls. You can play most games by simply scrolling down on the homepage and pressing the game you want and signing up is not necessary to play these games. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths
Marc Patton

Game Design Tool Kit | Learning Games Network - 98 views

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    Registered members of our website can now download the Game Design Tool Kit free of charge by clicking on the link to the left. Inquire about our Professional Development Inservice Training Sessions, Game Jams and Boot Camps…all built upon the foundation of the Game Design Tool Kit.
Martin Burrett

Maths Games - from Mangahigh - 60 views

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    A fantastic maths games website which has games designed to practise particular skills in maths. There's blasting robots games and picking flowers games. Signing up is not necessary to play most games. A must try site. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths
Martin Burrett

Storybricks - 160 views

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    A 3D role-playing game designer that encourages learners to create stories narratives by playing the game. Designing games is fun and it is easy to share with your class mates. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English
Martin Burrett

GamePress - 48 views

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    This is a great iPad app which lets you make amazing games with the minimum of coding experience. Use the pre-made characters and props or make your own using your camera or gallery images. Control the behaviour of each item to make some intricate games with a flick of your finger. Your designs are only limited by your imagination. Share your games with others at the click of a button. Download the app at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/GamePress/id637370800?mt=8 http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
Mark Glynn

(32) (PDF) Gamification in Education: A Systematic Mapping Study | Gennady Agre - Acade... - 11 views

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    "While gamification is gaining ground in business, marketing, corporate management, health insurance,ecology and wellness initiatives, its application in education is still an emerging trend. This article presents a study of the published empirical research on the application of gamification to education.The study is limited to papers that discuss explicitly the effects of use of game elements in specificeducational contexts. It employs a systematic mapping design. Accordingly, a categorical structure forclassifying the research results is proposed based on the extracted topics discussed in the reviewed papers. The categories include gamification design principles, game mechanics, context of applyinggamification, consisting of type of application, educational level, and academic subject,implementation and evaluation. By mapping the published work to the classification criteria andanalyzing them, the study highlights the directions of the currently conducted empirical research onapplying gamification to education. It also indicates some major obstacles and needs, such as the needfor a proper technological support, the need for controlled studies demonstrating reliable positive ornegative results of using specific game elements in particular educational contexts, etc. Although mostof the reviewed papers report promising results, more substantial empirical research is needed todetermine whether both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation of the learners can be influenced bygamification"
Thieme Hennis

A taxonomy of motivation and game design | Instructional Design Fusions - 0 views

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    "The will to learn is an intrinsic motive, one that finds both its source and its reward in its own exercise. The will to learn becomes a 'problem' only under specialized circumstances like those of a school, where a curriculum is set, students confined and a path fixed. The problem exists not so much in learning itself, but in the fact that what the school imposes often fails to enlist the natural energies that sustain spontaneous learning (Bruner, 1966, p. 127)."
Martin Burrett

BAFTA Young Game Designers - 39 views

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    Game designing competiton for students aged 11-16. Bafta in association with EA
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    A competition to find the best young game designer by BAFTA. Entrants must be 11-16 years old. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/~Competitions+&+Charity
Martin Burrett

MathMovesU - 143 views

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    This is a superb maths games and activities site. Design an avatar and stroll around and choose what activities you would like to do in a range of maths topics. The games are great and the graphics are well designed and child-friendly. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths
Martin Burrett

Fantastic Contraption - 24 views

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    A superb logic/thinking puzzle game where players must design a contraption to complete the challenges. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Educational+Games
Lyn Lord

Circuitboard Education - 37 views

We are excited to announce the launch of the educational consulting partnership Circuitboard Education, LLC at CircuitboardEducation.com . Circuitboard Education, CBE, is a consulting and design te...

Games and classrooms. Authentic assessments.

started by Lyn Lord on 02 Dec 16 no follow-up yet
Martin Burrett

Microsoft's Kodu Game Lab - 16 views

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    Download this 'must try' game creating and editing suite from Microsoft. Build characters, objects, scenery and design the structure of the games. Build and play entire worlds. It's an ICT teacher's dream. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
Martin Burrett

Game Show Computer Game Builder - 122 views

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    Make a game show with this game building tool. Enter your questions and up to five possible answers. Download the XML file and either a flash or HTML file to play. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+&+Web+Tools
chad even

Free Technology for Teachers: Get the Math - Multimedia Algebra Challenges - 155 views

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    Get the Math is a super website designed to provide teachers and students with Algebra-based mathematics challenges. Get the Math tries to put the challenges in the context of the "real world" scenarios of fashion design, video game design, and music production.
Martin Burrett

Cargo Bridge - 109 views

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    A great design and problem solving game where players must build bridges to collect the parcels. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Educational+Games
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