Group items tagged

Learn about the gamification of the university experience at RIT's School of Interactive Games & Media. I learned about this at a MIT talk on Civic Games, which was written up here: http://civic.mit.edu/blog/mstem/event-writeup-civic-games. They only really touched on motivation, autonomy, and rewards, but the transcript is also worth checking out for the names of people, books, and sites mentioned.

I forgot to point out the interesting use of RFID in Just Press Play.

This is an inspring slide-show from an MIT professor on "elements of a successful career of a graduate student". Interestingly, tenacity (or something of a similar kind) has been mentioned multiple times as a desirable quality. 

A powerful game that teaches students to understand the operation of the world! The creator John Hunter is coming to Harvard on Monday! (http://www.gse.harvard.edu/calendar/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D104615526) 

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.

Thinking of the peripheral implications of technology in school. Architecture and interior design need to be really smart.

An interesting article on game play in the classroom...students take on the role of a video game character and act the part during game performances!

If you look at it as 'play' instead of 'game' I think it opens a whole range of possibilities. Which is not surprising. As young children, we learned through play, often elaborate role-play.

Hi Jackie - this just reminded me to post a link below re: the CUNY (City University of New York) group that reflects on and develops all types of games in teaching. http://games.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

"Do mouse clicking and video sharing count as legitimate forms of grass-roots mobilization?" A look at online video as a tool for engaging viewers in social action.

This is a really good paper that shows how to evaluate tools for education with learning curves. They use adaptive tutoring systems as an example but it can be applied to just about any educational tool, such as a website, tablet app, and so on. There is some math, but it is very approachable. 

Some questions-driven tips on dissecting an academic article.

This is a very interesting project, especially in light of our conversation about ways that physiological and psychological markers can inform learning systems (adaptive learning, responsive software, etc.)

Great demonstration of engaging graduate/undergraduates in course materials at MIT

"The hand-gesture recognition system uses a camera developed by Microsoft, called Kinect, which senses three-dimensional space. The camera, found in consumer electronics games that can track a person's hands, maps the surgeon's body in 3-D."

Duke's entrance into the MOOC space with a course on Bioelectricity. Participation peaked at 1000 students per week. 12,000 students enrolled from 100 countries. The educational range of students varied greatly. 313 students successfully completed the course.

Ms Lindquist, a free web-based intelligent tutoring system on algebra.