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This is a webinar chat that I sat in on today (A few questions I posed are featured in the Q&A at the end.) With the new SimCity release, they have also partnered with a company called GlassLab that has designed a teacher resource hub and also modified game that enables teachers to easily use the game in classrooms. There will be specific inquiry based challenges that allow students to interact in the game environment to investigate community issues (ranging from water shortages, power outages, labor disputes, earthquakes, budget concerns, etc.) and work with citizens and government to solve the issues. There is also an exciting multiplayer format where neighboring cities are controlled by other students and they must work together to solve problems. Glass Lab is partnering with EA Games, Gates Foundation, and ETS to build the teacher hub where educators can design and share best practices, lesson plans, etc. In addition, they will be doing a long term study to measure educational outcomes. It appears as though they are using this game as a pilot opportunity to build the framework for larger commercial game integration into the classroom.

This post discusses downsides of gamification in the classroom, and it links to many interesting resources.  "I'm increasingly concerned about approaches that I think will suck the life out of gaming and play..."

Interesting though scary. As Dede points out in the article, it is concerning that faculty may use these "engagement indices" as a form of evaluation.

This is a link to a forum discussion page where concerned Singaporean parents discuss whether or not to give monetary rewards to their children for A grades. It also features an article which interviews Prof Richard Ryan (or Ryan & Deci). Interesting to see parents grapple with this and try to come to terms with research evidence..

Devices like the iPad are new and fun and give children an incentive to read, including those who might be reluctant. It's a new motivation to explore reading. However, the concern is that parents rely too much on them and stop engagement with their young children.

This is an interesting article on how information technology has created the "new student." Largely due to technology, students are finding an imbalance between their expectations of a learning environment and what they are finding in college and university classrooms. This implication has begun to affect decisions concerning courses, curricula, programs and services.

This is a blog about a mother's concern for her 6-year-old child's iPad addiction. I saw a similar experience when I visited my 3-year-old and 1-year-old nieces over break. They constantly asked for their mother's iPad and iPhone. It was shocking to see how they could navigate, select songs/videos, and yes, download apps! Moreover, they would spend hours playing with them. It's simply amazing to see how quickly a child can learn a particular piece of technology if they are engaged and motivated to use it.

Thanks for sharing this, Chris. It's both interesting and relevant to my project for this course. A comment at the bottom suggested that really the companies need to change their unrealistic minimum criteria for job candidates. I've heard that argument before, and sometimes I do wonder when I see complaints from companies looking only for people with 5+ years of STEM work experience railing on the state of STEM education. What do you think?

Thanks for sharing Chris! I can totally relate to this. I remember having to sit through those "weed out" intro biology and chemistry courses in undergrad. They were the antithesis of motivating but I pushed through because I knew without them I couldn't do the "cool science" I wanted to. I remember at the time thinking these courses were weeding out people who were entertaining the idea of a STEM career but just didn't want to put up with the cut throat nature of these courses. It seemed to me the classes were more concerned about weeding out people than by providing an environment that really fostered learning.

Research paper exploring how to create an engaging game experience

Pigs in Space: Some data on this popular (not to me) FB app, which is owned by Zynga, a gaming concern valued at $1 billion last year.

Commentary on a new report showing how extensively kids use media

Some negative effects of Video games i.e. RSI