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Saw it in H561's discussion! Interesting idea! 

Nothing is hotter in the education world right now than the massive open online course, or MOOC. MOOCs make an elite education available to anyone, typically for free but without course credit. But how completely can online courses reproduce the college experience? Lexington writer and entrepreneur Jonathan Haber wanted to find out.

Hear MIT GAMBIT Lab experts talk about engagement in practical terms--and get some hands-on experience designing a board or video game. The three-hour workshops are part of the Cambridge Science Festival; this event takes place on April 28 and requires a $5 preregistration. Though I'm sure EMF will be touched on one way or another in all of the workshops, I thought the Serious Games for Social Change workshop might be of particular interest to you all: "In this workshop, best practice examples of serious games for social change will be played, discussed and analyzed. Furthermore ideas and sketches for proto-types will be developed and ways of realizing them will be discussed! The workshop gives the participants hands-on experiences and insights into the potential and limits of video games designed for social change. No pre-experiences are needed!"

Interesting article about how certain features of video games (gaining experience points, forming guilds, etc.) are being incorporated in unexpected ways in our lives.

This author believes that games can be the basis of learning and explores various ways that games promote thinking and motivation.

A talk about how the RSA Animate series seeks to engage learners in innovative ways and how it draws from new research on cognitive engagement.

Brandon, have you ever used one of their animations

I haven't used it in a formal way. Although I find myself very engaged in the content. I've seen some of the animations that are other talks that they converted to an animation, and it's really incredible how much more engaging it becomes with fairly simple, yet beautiful graphics.

Distructive...? Disruptive, yes. Internet is still finding ways to upend business models and psycho-social norms.

One study showing how the use of realistic avatars can influence people to exercise or eat better and can influence they way they view women.

Norwegian landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd trekked to the highest mountain in Spain (El Teide), camped outside without a tent or sleeping bag, and slept only 10 hours over the seven days it took to capture this breathtaking time-lapse footage of the Milky Way galaxy. 

Ways to increase student engagement

An effort to engage kids in coding by getting tech and non-tech celebraties to discuss coding in an accessible way. Also, attempts to motivate  them to get into a career where they can work in a really cool office...

By now, we're used to letting Facebook and Twitter capture our social lives on the web -- building a "social layer" on top of the real world. In his talk, Seth Priebatsch looks at the next layer in progress: the "game layer," a pervasive net of behavior-steering game dynamics that will reshape education and commerce.

Yes, indeed. The ideal is to intrinsically integrate. That's a good idea. Why not? In fact, maybe the alternate reality games qualify as "real world" layer over games because in such games, whatever happens in games impact the reality in certain ways. We could also design games to work the other way around, e.g. a diet game, where only when you do exercise in a gym in the real world, can you advance levels in the game.

Haha yes!! I recall a rowing machine which actually had a game in front of users so that they could compete with 'other rowers'. It was great and definitely made the workout more fun. I stopped though after a friend slipped his disc on the machine...

As usual, Tom Friedman finds a really snazy way to say some really cool things... but he also leaves out the 'grey" areas. 

Thanks for sharing this Lisa. I think the last sentence in the article is where the real challenge is because the outstanding is not that easily available in MOOCs.

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.)

Providing multiple means of access to improve engagement- here is a way to add subtitles to instructional videos posted on Youtube.  

This was a great succinct article with easy to follow principles. Thanks for sharing.

Engagement is a buzz word but who descriptive is it?