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Is this the best use of $80,000 to improve a classroom?

Caspian Learning built an immersive 3D serious game for Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity in the UK to increase operator engagement in training to use medical hoists.

On a study break, I rediscovered this quite addictive, simple game that I think captures the ideas of flow quite nicely. I think the simple design, exponential scoring, soothing music, great art, and realistic physics make it quite immersive (for better or for worse!)

The music, the challenge of hitting the bells, the fact that the bells actually add some 'harmony' to the music, the high score at the end of the game. Simply brilliant. Thanks for sharing it!

Using open source Virtual World software to intentionally disrupt an education system. A bold vision and I think an opportunity for bold research.

Do 3-D interfaces cause headaches? Potential trouble for immersive visuals as 3-D interfaces require unnatural eye movements which may result in visually induced motion sickness. More popcorn please.

I didn't end up with any ill effects, but I noticed that your inability to focus on objects on different levels of the 3D plane is unnerving. Often there would be interesting flora in the foreground, and because it's in 3D, you want to look at it but you can't focus your eyes on it.

I watched this last night. Pretty lousy flick, but interesting questions about avatar/person relationship in particularly immersive games.

A video game is being created in the UK "that will engage and immerse young people in learning about democracy and the role of Parliament in scrutinising the government, representing the public, and making laws."

Interesting look at MOOCs

I like how the author provides honest feedback about how difficult it is for the teacher to deliver courses online. It democratizes education and allows for huge scaling, but it requires Intense preparation, lack of immediate feedback from students, lack of immersive environment for students.

"Quest supports a dynamic curriculum that uses the underlying design principles of games to create academically challenging, immersive, game-like learning experiences for students. Games and other forms of digital media also model the complexity and promise of "systems." Understanding and accounting for this complexity is a fundamental literacy of the 21st century."

Virtual Education Oasis... humm? Where do you think we will be in 2044? Author Ernest Cline, is interviewed about his novel Ready Player One, where "schools are built like palaces on the violence-free planet Ludus, and students take daytrips through both the Louvre and the human heart. These are but some of the benefits offered by the OASIS, a massive, multiplayer online game where most people in 2044 choose to spend their existence, away from the troubles of the real world. The OASIS combines the scope of a galaxy with the immersion of the Matrix; it is a near-perfect virtual reality."

This article talks about experiential gaming and making the construct of flow operational for educational games. The study used a business simulation and questionnaire to measure videogame "flow antecedents" like clear goals and challenge-skill balance, flow state indicators like concentration and time distortion, and the "flow consequences" of learning and exploratory behavior for about 100 students attending a school of economics. "This study is part of an ongoing attempt to develop a usable and valid scale for assessing flow experience in educational games." (Log in with Harvard access)

What are the benefits and risks to teen online participation? Dr. Boyd immerses herself in youth communities and researches issues of race, gender, social networking, activism and more.