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Ed Webb

Two Excellent Tools to Create Educational Games for your Class ~ Educational Technology... - 5 views

www.educatorstechnology.com/...excellent-tools-to-create.html

games tools education

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Brett Boessen on 25 Aug 13
     
    Game Maker is a much more complex - and hard to learn - tool than Kodu, but the kinds of games you can make with it are more varied, too.
  • ...3 more comments...
  • Bryan Alexander on 26 Aug 13
     
    Is it something a small college can handle?
  • Brett Boessen on 26 Aug 13
     
    I'd say yes, depending on where in the curriculum you're looking to insert it. My CS colleague here does work with his students on Unity, which is FAR more complex than Gamemaker. But I wouldn't recommend trying to get students to make games with GM unless you're going to contribute a lot of your class time to it: demos, how-tos, workshops, and assignments (all multiple). With Kodu, you probably could get away with one longer class, two shorter ones, or an out of class evening workshop, and then just let them play with it. So as always, it's what you're hoping to accomplish with the assignment of the tool that will drive which tool you choose. :) For me, GM is really for people who want to make games they plan to circulate among people outside your class; Kodu could be that or could be to help learn the fundamentals of game design (or other procedural concepts).
  • Bryan Alexander on 26 Aug 13
     
    Good to know, Brett; thanks. Now, isn't Kodu aimed at the XBox platform?
  • Brett Boessen on 26 Aug 13
     
    It was originally, but now you can download it for Windows. I /believe/ you can then export your games to a public platform as well, but they may only be available to others with Kodu installed.
  • Bryan Alexander on 27 Aug 13
     
    For Windows? That changes things a great deal.
Ed Webb

Parents Find Children With Autism Benefit From Video Games | TheLedger.com - 0 views

www.theledger.com/...120529985

games gaming autism

shared by Ed Webb on 21 May 12 - No Cached
  • Children (on the Autism spectrum) take games that call you a loser or say other things like that very personally
  • Garth Chouteau, spokesman for PopCap Games, says the company has received an immense amount of calls and letters from parents of children with an ASD diagnosis, such as Schramek, stating the positive effects their games have had on children. "These games are created with no purpose in mind other than fun, but people say these games help them relax and provide cognitive activity for their children. These are side effects of a really good game," says Chouteau.
  • "Kids on the autism spectrum have a hard time with emotional control. From a social standpoint, one of the things the games are helpful with is teaching the children to take turns."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Chase Lebron, who was diagnosed with autism in 2004 at the age of 2, loves to play MarioKart and Pokemon. She found that allowing him to play these games teaches Chase how to cope with the difficult concept of winning and losing. "Their ability to cope with not always winning is not the same as with other children. Their expectations when playing these games can be a bit unrealistic so in playing them it helps teach how to deal with the concept of losing. I've also noticed that playing these games helps with hand-eye coordination," says Torres.
  • "The games on an iPhone, such as ‘Angry Birds" and ‘Jetpack Joyride,' are really great, simple games that you can use to work on goal setting. Every game has a goal that you are supposed to accomplish," says Hull. "Kids lose focus when there is too much going on around them, so having goals in a game teaches them to focus beyond the distractions to complete the mission."
Ed Webb

Violent video games touted as learning tool - Yahoo! News - 1 views

news.yahoo.com/...us_games_for_learning

games learning gaming education educational_games

shared by Ed Webb on 28 May 10 - Cached
  • "As you know, most of us females just hate those action video games," she said. "You don't have to use shooting. You can use, for example, a princess which has a magic wand and whenever she touches something, it turns into a butterfly and sparkles."
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 28 May 10
       
      Wait, wut?
  • you learn to learn
  • Bryan Alexander on 01 Jun 10
     
    "You could use stereotype powers, too!" Sigh. This was odd: "Games for Learning, a daylong symposium on the educational uses of video games and computer games. The event, the first of its kind..." Really?
Ed Webb

Fun Inc: Why Games Are the 21st Century's Most Serious Business by Tom Chatfield | Book... - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...fun-inc-games-tom-chatfield

gaming games book review socialscience

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Fun Inc.: Why Games are the 21st Century's Most Serious Business by Tom Chatfield 288pp, Virgin Books, £11.99
  • games might involve a lot of effort, but the payoff is that "effort is always rewarded".
  • elf-and-safety roleplayer World of Warcraft
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • First, games are interesting in themselves, as constructions of space, logic and ideas (games are "a kind of playground for the mind"); second, they are interesting in their potential effect on other realms.
  • he possibility of using gamelike structures to produce empirical results in the social sciences
  • Chatfield's emphasis on games' fecund variety, on the other hand, will be valuable to non-specialists: he writes evocatively not just about Grand Theft Auto but about indie gems such as Passage, where your quest is meaningless and you die after five minutes. His comparison of videogames to installation art, meanwhile, is striking, and he even manages to make World of Warcraft sound interesting – though his awed description of a particular sword as being "the length of a full-grown orc" is rather lovable nonsense to someone who doesn't know how long orcs grow.
  • "the best games are a trigger for discussion, reading and writing – not an end to it"
  • Ed Webb on 02 Apr 10
     
    games might involve a lot of effort, but the payoff is that "effort is always rewarded".
Brett Boessen

Reacting to the Past - 4 views

Agreed. That last, Bryan, can be an excellent way to draw non-"gamer" folks into game principles and design, too. This looks cool; passing it along to my historian colleague.

games simulation role play pedagogy

started by edremy on 27 Jul 11 2 follow-ups, last by Brett Boessen on 28 Jul 11
Erik Hanson liked it
Bryan Alexander

World of Warcraft Finds Its Way Into Class | MindShift - 1 views

blogs.kqed.org/...craft-finds-its-way-into-class

pedagogy gaming

shared by Bryan Alexander on 27 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 27 Mar 13
     
    World of Warcraft Students' passions can be a powerful driver for deeper and more creative learning. With this knowledge, some educators are using popular commercial games like World of Warcraft (WoW) to create curriculum around the game.
Bryan Alexander

Bringing new life to a 'dead' language | News Center | Wake Forest University - 0 views

news.wfu.edu/...ng-new-life-to-a-dead-language

gamification pedagogy

shared by Bryan Alexander on 22 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 22 Apr 13
     
    Published: April 19, 2013 Role-playing game energizes Latin class Choose your character, write spells, map the dungeon and move up levels. It sounds like Dungeons and Dragons, but it's not. It's Latin class. Each student plays a hero from Graeco-Roman myth with a backstory, personality and actions determined largely by the student.
Ed Webb

Bond University conducts class through Minecraft after flood damage closes ca... - 4 views

www.polygon.com/...h-minecraft-after-flood-damage

minecraft education games

shared by Ed Webb on 31 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 05 Feb 13
     
    Whoa! A glimpse of the future?
Ed Webb

A COMPUTERLESS VIDEOGAME MODDING WORKSHOP | Molleindustria - 5 views

www.molleindustria.org/...ess-videogame-modding-workshop

games gaming modding

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Brett Boessen on 29 Oct 12
     
    Thank you, sir: we were *just* talking about not only games and rhetoric/ideology last week but several Molle Industria games in particular in my Persuasive Media class. I'm posting a quick entry on our class blog (http://acpm12.wordpress.com/).
  • Bryan Alexander on 30 Oct 12
     
    Very cool. (Molle has a blog? To the RSS reader!)
Bryan Alexander

University Offers Class on Skyrim and Medieval Scandinavia | HackCollege - 2 views

www.hackcollege.com/...university-class-skyrim.html

game education fun

shared by Bryan Alexander on 22 Oct 12 - No Cached
Erik Hanson liked it
  • Bryan Alexander on 22 Oct 12
     
    Money isn't everything, but not having it sure can but a dent in everything. In college, your money is thin and the things you can spend it on- trips, food and drinks- are everywhere. So with that in mind, here are five ways to stretch your money further. 1.
Bryan Alexander

What are you going to do with gaming this fall? - 2 views

Fall 2009 is coming up, maybe faster than we'd like. What are you planning on doing with gaming, come August and September? ...in classes ...for research ...in the library ...elsewhere on campus?

gaming class teaching learning research

started by Bryan Alexander on 11 Jun 09 no follow-up yet
Ed Webb

The Wired Campus - U. of Texas System Buys Land in Second Life - The Chronicle of Highe... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...8057

education games secondlife UTexas

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Sep 09 - Cached
  • The University of Texas system has purchased land in the online world Second Life, betting the investment will improve teaching and research at all of its institutions. The university system, made up of nine universities and six health centers, doesn’t have concrete plans for how each school will use Second Life. It hopes that administrators, faculty members, researchers, and students will take advantage of the virtual real estate over the academic year.
Todd Bryant

flgaming / FrontPage - 0 views

flgaming.pbworks.com

ForeignLanguage

shared by Todd Bryant on 11 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Todd Bryant on 11 Jun 09
     
    Wiki for the use of games in languages, includes background research and examples. I particularly like the idea of a class becoming a study abroad sim/ARG.
Ed Webb

Google Develops a Facebook Rival - WSJ.com - 1 views

online.wsj.com/...3292704575393531040685308.html

google facebook casual social games gaming

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • A Facebook spokesman said the company wouldn't speculate about Google's initiative but said the company expected new social-networking efforts by others and "looks forward to seeing what others have to offer."
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 28 Jul 10
       
      Translation: "bring it!"
    • Bryan Alexander
      Bryan Alexander on 28 Jul 10
       
      Indeed. I note that Google is seeking gaming assistance in this quest.
  • Many users now rely on their friends on Facebook—not just Google—to discover content and products they can purchase on the Internet. And much of the content generated by users on Facebook is generally kept out of view of Google's search engine.
  • In an interview this week, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt declined to confirm the development of a social-networking service that would incorporate social games, rumored to be called "Google Me." When asked if Google's service might resemble Facebook's, Mr. Schmidt said "the world doesn't need a copy of the same thing."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • For social-game developers, a successful Google offering would mean they wouldn't be so heavily dependent on Facebook, where the vast majority of users access the games. Consumers' appetite for social games is booming— Zynga's "Farmville" game has more than 60 million active monthly users—and that is attracting bigger players looking to tap new sources of growth. On Tuesday, Walt Disney Co. acquired Playdom for $563.2 million plus up to $200 million more if performance targets are reached. And retailer GameStop Corp. agreed to buy online game distributor Kongregate Inc. for an undisclosed amount.
  • Game developers pay Facebook 30% of the earnings from virtual-good purchases in their games. Google already has an online payment mechanism called Checkout that, in theory, it could use to collect payments for social games on its platform.
Todd Bryant

Games don't Equal Academic Achievement - 20 views

edugamesresearch.com/...g-home-computers-and-academics

pedagogy research

shared by Todd Bryant on 19 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Todd Bryant on 19 Oct 10
     
    Makes a good point. There's a big difference between showing games help students learn, and finding games that match the much more narrow objectives of a class.
  • ...7 more comments...
  • Bryan Alexander on 19 Oct 10
     
    Sure... compare with reading a book, or doing an experiment. It takes contextualization and reflection, which can be done by a learner (autodictat) or school (pedagogy).
  • Todd Bryant on 19 Oct 10
     
    It's also a higher level of learning that's difficult to quantify. Student A and B take History 101. Student A is given a book on US History after 1870. Gets test on same topic. If he read the book, does pretty well. Student B plays a history game, explains outcome, and compares with actual historical events. Certainly more impressive, but if given the standard 101 exam, would he do better? I think games are likely to get the short end of the stick with most standardized assessments.
  • Brett Boessen on 20 Oct 10
     
    I don't know -- it has much to do with the way the prof articulates her objectives. For us (who use games regularly), we can/will shape our objectives at least somewhat around existing titles (just as others do so around existing texts), or augment those games with other content that they don't cover (as others do with inadequate texts). So it seems the issue is more about trying to articulate why games could be useful to *others*, who don't yet use them. Trying to persuade our colleagues to try games when they've been using texts with which they're familiar to accomplish pedagogical objectives they've been using for years is going to be hard, and that's where identifying games that more directly support traditional objectives becomes a boon.
  • Ed Webb on 20 Oct 10
     
    I wonder if we could develop a few talking points tying games to Bloom's taxonomy (updated version), making clear that like all pedagogical tools, games address some student needs better than others. And, of course, that not all games address the same type of developmental tasks, just as all texts, A/V materials, classroom techniques do not address the same tasks. The computer/radio analogy is a good one. Expecting computers and/or games to replace some other educational and entertainment resource is missing the point - they are their own thing.
  • Brett Boessen on 21 Oct 10
     
    Ed, I feel like such a set of points might already exist and/or have been publicly expressed by game critics/designers, especially from the serious games side of things. But that shouldn't stop us from discussing whether they might be in need of update/reworking/extension. :) I'm interested -- could/should we try to look at some existing texts/posts and then come together in a conference call or something?
  • Ed Webb on 21 Oct 10
     
    I'm thinking something specific to liberal arts educators. We could brainstorm with an etherpad clone (e.g. ietherpad.com) or asynchronously via a google doc.
  • Bryan Alexander on 21 Oct 10
     
    Ed, would you object if I took that Bloom's approach in a forthcoming paper? "augment those games with other content that they don't cover (as others do with inadequate texts)" - nicely said, Brett.
  • Ed Webb on 26 Oct 10
     
    Go for it, Bryan. If you want to kick ideas around, let me know.
  • Bryan Alexander on 26 Oct 10
     
    Will certainly do.
Ed Webb

Simulation - 3 views

alliereedsblog.blogspot.com/...simulation.html

simulation game opinion blog

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 15 Nov 10
     
    First of several posts by students playing Peacemaker as a way of thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Bryan Alexander on 17 Nov 10
     
    Are these from that Army College down the road from you guys?
  • Ed Webb on 17 Nov 10
     
    These are students in my Int'l Politics of the Middle East Class: https://www.google.com/reader/bundle/user/02949324672354748984/bundle/IntPolMidEast Shalom's Conflict Resolution class also recently did an exercise with Peacemaker, and will shortly be invited to comment on this series of blog posts.
  • Bryan Alexander on 17 Nov 10
     
    Oh great!
Todd Bryant

صحارى أول لعبة إستراتيجية عربية على الإنترنت - 1 views

www.sa7ara.ae

Arabic

shared by Todd Bryant on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Todd Bryant on 11 Nov 10
     
    For Arabic classes?
Bryan Alexander

Learning the art of creating computer games can boot student skills - 2 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...100121101124.htm

gaming pedagogy

shared by Bryan Alexander on 25 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 25 Jan 10
     
    Computer games have a broad appeal that transcends gender, culture, age and socioeconomic status. Now, computer scientists think that creating computer games, rather than just playing them could boost students' critical and creative thinking skills as well as broaden their participation in computing." id="metasummary
  • Ed Webb on 26 Jan 10
     
    I totally agree. But from my experience having students write interactive fiction in a senior seminar, this is a very time- and resource-intensive way to impart those skills. Not sure it is doable as part of a broader course. Perhaps a full course in game design is yet another thing to add to the stack of basic literacies in the general curriculum...
  • Bryan Alexander on 26 Jan 10
     
    Perhaps thinner and/or lighter projects would work better. Thinner: spread the work even further across a class. Individual projects ->groups, groups ->whole class. Lighter: even easier to use tools. Inform is pretty easy, though...
Ed Webb

Do Role-Playing Simulations Generate Measurable and Meaningful Outcomes? A Simulation's... - 2 views

www3.interscience.wiley.com/...abstract

IR games gaming simulation assessment

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Feb 10 - No Cached
  • Role-playing simulations are frequently claimed to be effective pedagogical tools in the teaching of international relations (IR); however, there is a surprising lack of empirical evidence on their classroom utility. The assessment of simulations remains mostly anecdotal, and some recent research has found little to no statistically significant improvements in quantitative measures of academic performance among students who participated in them [for example, International Studies Perspectives (2006), vol. 7, pp. 395; International Studies Perspectives (2008), vol. 9, pp. 75–89]. Scant research has been conducted on how role-playing simulations might affect students' perceptions of the instructor's teaching. This paper investigates whether a simulation had statistically significant effect on students' exam scores in an IR course or on student teaching evaluation scores.
Rebecca Davis

How to "Gamify" Your Class Website - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 5 views

chronicle.com/...31332

games gamify syllabus

shared by Rebecca Davis on 21 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Rebecca Davis on 21 Feb 11
     
    how to add game elements to your online syllabus in wordpress
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