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Katy Vance

Avatars Teach Teens About Self-Image | Edutopia - 3 views

  • Each time the students created a new avatar, Whiting would assign them to a different pod, or small group, within Teen Second Life. Pods of four or five students would virtually fly to a private space where they used chat tools to discuss a set of questions posed by Whiting.
    • Katy Vance
       
      I LOVE this! What a great way to get students talking about a difficult concept.  
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    Eighth graders type furiously on the keyboards in a middle school computer lab. Their spirited online chat is all about appearances: Who looks gross? Who wants a makeover? Most teachers would ban this kind of digital discussion, but not health teacher Diane Whiting...
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    "I immediately understood the potential," Sheehy says. "In creating an avatar, students would have so many opportunities to reflect on the choices they make." The site allows teens to modify every aspect of their avatar's appearance, including body type, hair color, skin tone, and wardrobe. Talking about the choices the students were making was the logical next step for learning.
Katy Vance

TEDxBozeman - Paul Andersen - Classroom Game Design - YouTube - 0 views

  • Paul Andersen has been teaching science in Montana for the last eighteen years.  He explains how he is using elements of game design to improve learning in his AP Biology classroom.  Paul's science videos have been viewed millions of times by students around the world.  He was the 2011 Montana Teacher of the Year and he is currently a science teacher at Bozeman High School.  For more information on Paul's work visit http://www.bozemanscience.co
Katy Vance

TEDxStudioCityED - Lewis Tachau - Can Online Gaming be Educational? - YouTube - 0 views

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    13 year old talking about what he learned about life, cooperation and WWII from online gaming.
Katy Vance

Gamification doesn't exist | Jessica Vallance - User Experience Designer - 0 views

  • . People are motivated by progress. People are motivated by social validation. These designs have just taken things people already want to do – learning stuff, going places, getting fit – and motivated people to do them more by making it easier for users to a) track their progess and b) tell other people what they’re doing.
  • The most important things about a game is that it offers an experience that is enjoyable in itself. If a game is designed well, people will play it just for the entertainment. Very few gamifcation examples seem to remember this, and so not many focus on creating a fantastic gaming experience as their priority, but there are some.
  • In his book Playful Design, John Ferrara talks about the game Foldit. The game gives users puzzles to complete based on protein folding and scientists examine the solutions provided by the highest scorers to see if there is anything that can be applied to real-life proteins. One of the solutions helped scientists to decipher the structure of an AIDs-causing monkey virus – remarkably, something they’d been trying to do for 15 years before they got Foldit players on the case
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    Interesting perspective on the idea that "gamification" doesn't exist, merely games or tasks made fun...
Katy Vance

Microsoft Research FUSE Labs - Kodu Game Lab - 0 views

shared by Katy Vance on 05 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Kodu is a rich tool for narrative creation and storytelling
    • Katy Vance
       
      They're hitting that important storytelling factor!
Katy Vance

Game Creation - Paul's E-Learning Resources - 0 views

  • Construct - This is similar to Game Maker but it's totally free, has a nicer interface and can produce some really great results - well worth a look!
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    A long list of resources for you and your students to use to create their own games. 
Katy Vance

This Changes Everything: iPhone's Five-Year Gaming Revolution | GamesIndustry Internati... - 0 views

  • With expensive consoles stuck in long cycles, iPhone has transformed from a poor phone with no third-party content into a retina-screened gaming powerhouse with over half a million apps to choose from in less time than it took Sony to make Gran Turismo 5.
  • In this context a game has mere seconds to impress before it is banished back into the ether and damned with a one-star review. Needless to say, that is not a friendly environment for great ideas that need a little explaining to flourish.
    • Katy Vance
       
      This si key- how do we design games (and lessons for that matter) that are self-evident in terms of how to play them?
  • You don't reach a billion based on a spectacularly unoriginal physics game and some cartoon birds alone. It needed the ecosystem, installed base and cool cultural cachet of Apple.
    • Katy Vance
       
      You know, this makes me think about the fact that we haven't really discussed the tech factors involved in gaming.  I know lots of games in McGonigal's book don't require tech, but I think I will need technology to manage large numbers of students in a library.
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    But you know what the truly amazing aspect of iPhone's gaming revolution is? That it happened without Apple even really trying. The company hasn't the slightest interest in making games; it just created the right platform, delivery mechanism and economics for them in the eyes - and hands - of consumers.
Katy Vance

Local Students Learn Financial Basics Through the BECU mLevel™ Challenge « Th... - 0 views

  • 4. The Alan Jackson song, Too Much of a Good Thing (is a Good Thing) was proven false in this case. While response to the games was positive, some students felt there was too much activity in a compressed amount of time. A better cadence is 1-2 games and classes per month vs. per week in the compressed pilot.
    • Katy Vance
       
      This is important to keep in mind- we can't overdo it.  Gamification, in my mind, is a teaching tool, and you have to balance it with other approaches as well.
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