Group items tagged

"Using gaming as a vehicle for learning is a very powerful idea and one that is under-utilized. This wiki is an attempt to create a comprehensive resource about gaming that we can all learn from - all contributions welcome!"

This is great -- lots of info here. Who's running it / who are the admins? Or is it just kindof crowdsourced?

Persson produced this in 48 hours for a game design competition.

Just walk up to it and press X -- it opens the window, which lists everything you can make and which/how much resources are needed to make the item. If you have gathered enough, it will list those you are able to make at the top of the list. It does not seem like you can pick up a workbench like you can in Minecraft, but maybe I'm missing something.

I guess I need to gather more resources. ...or get back to work! Click to focus indeed.

ECAR report Author(s) Rhonda M. Epper (Colorado Community College System), Anne Derryberry (Sage Road Solutions, LLC), Sean Jackson (University of Virginia)

"Dr. Keller: I designed the simulation with two main goals in mind. First, it had to be an effective teaching tool. I wanted to take abstract concepts and theories that my students often had difficulty grasping, and make these vivid and clearly understandable. I wanted students to personally experience the challenges and complexities of world politics-to get off the sidelines and become players. Although the countries, domestic factions, and global issues in Statecraft are fictional, they have been carefully designed to provide maximum insight into parallel real-world dilemmas: as students grapple with the Orion slavery issue, the threat posed by the melting Ice Mountain, and the temptation to seize Sapphire Island's vast resources they come to understand the security dilemma, the collective action problem, two-level games, the challenges of cooperation under anarchy, and many other constructs not as theoretical concepts but as visceral truths that permeate their conversations with classmates, friends, and parents, and may even keep them up at night."

I like the concept of Statecraft, and took an early look at them. But boy, I wish they would stop spamming up my inbox with invitations to lunch etc. Quite pushy.

That's weird. Are they aggressively courting players for other purposes, or pushing ads?

The pilot follows work undertaken by JISC Collections early in 2012, when a number of interactive educational software and games suppliers, as well as representatives of FE colleges, were interviewed to gauge the current extent and use of such software and online resources by the colleges.

"Wargames, especially on historical conflicts, do not currently play much part in the booming academic use of simulation and gaming techniques. This is despite the fact that they offer rich vehicles for active learning and interactive exploration of conflict dynamics. Constraints of time, expertise and resources do make it challenging to employ wargames in academia, but a greater problem is the stigma which wargaming attracts due to its association with childish enthusiasts and its perceived deficiencies as a modelling technique. This article builds on my many years of teaching and research experience with wargames to show how playing and designing them can benefit students and scholars alike."

Shalom Staub spotted this - may be of interest to some of the group

Ed and I both had the opportunity to listen in to some of the sessions. We agreed that the most interesting and useful information for our community was presented by the developer of A Force More Powerful. A newly designed, open-source, game on conflict resolution will be released in November 2009. The open-source design will allow people to add real or imaginary conflict scenarios as game modules.

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.

Go for it, Bryan. If you want to kick ideas around, let me know.

Will certainly do.

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

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...

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...

Interesting resource management game, for the British-Indian-Chinese opium trade.