UWCSEA Teachers

"What are video games doing? If you have an age-appropriate game that's not too easy or too hard, a video game is teaching a child how to cope with failure, deal with frustration, delay gratification, and often doing it in a social context, where they're learning to negotiate with their friends, working as a team, or 'OK, I beat you, you beat me, how do I handle all of these things?' "

A Neurologist Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool The popularity of video games is not the enemy of education, but rather a model for best teaching strategies. Games insert players at their achievable challenge level and reward player effort and practice with acknowledgement of incremental goal progress, not just final product. The fuel for this process is the pleasure experience related to the release of dopamine.

A DLC blog post sumarrsing the content of 'The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST)' report on video game violence in the UK. A document reviewing official government recommendations to improve children's digital and video game safety.

"Daphne Bavelier: Your brain on video games" How do fast-paced video games affect the brain? Step into the lab with cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier to hear surprising news about how video games, even action-packed shooter games, can help us learn, focus and, fascinatingly, multitask.

"Game Addiction" Two parts, but IMHO the first part is the part you MUST watch.

Andy Robertson presents his call for a new "Priesthood of Player-Critics" who nurture fresh perspectives on videogames that enable more people to benefit from their emergent ways of telling stories about being human.

Ten Surprising Truths about Video Games and Learning What we'd assumed about the importance of brain functions - following rules and logic and calculating - are no longer relevant. There's been a revolution in the learning sciences and the new theories say that human beings learn from experiences - that our brains can store every experience we've had, and that's what informs our learning process. Following that logic, he says, the best kind of learning comes as a result of well-designed experiences. Gee, who spoke at the Learning and the Brain Conference last week, used this theory to launch into research-validated reasons why video games are good for learning. Here are 10 truths, according to Gee."

A new gaming app is in development that will help scientists to analyse genetic data in the search for cancer cures. Cancer Research UK have teamed up with Google, Facebook and Amazon to develop a game you can play on your mobile that will simultaneously sort through genetic data. "A new gaming app is in development that will help scientists to analyse genetic data in the search for cancer cures. Cancer Research UK have teamed up with Google, Facebook and Amazon to develop a game you can play on your mobile that will simultaneously sort through genetic data.

It is predicted that by the end of this year, female gamers will outnumber men for the first time. However computer games are also increasingly being seen as a way for older people to keep mentally active.

Girls and Games: What's the Attraction? Games are increasingly recognized by educators as a way to get kids excited about learning. While the stereotype of a "gamer" may evoke the image of a high school boy holed up in a dark room playing on a console, in reality 62 percent of gamers play with other people either in person or online, and 47 percent of all gamers are girls. Game developers and academics who have been studying the elements that go into making games more attractive to girls found that those very same qualities are also important components of learning. For instance, girls are more drawn to games that require problem solving in context, that are collaborative (played through social media) and that produce what's perceived to be a social good. They also like games that simulate the real word and are particularly drawn to "transmedia" content that draws on characters from books, movies, or toys.

"Technology is changing the world rapidly, impacting the way students learn and opening new possibilities for educators. Take a look what Sir Ken Robinson had to say when asked about the role of technology in education."

Six Ted Talks on the advantages of Gaming

A list of films about poets and films featuring poetry -- and see their list of "Poetry in Movies: A Partial List" - the link is on the sidebar of this starting page

March 6 is World Read-Aloud Day

This is an interactive where students can set up scenarios for a meteor hitting the earth.  They can set projectile parameters, impact parameters, target parameters and distance from impact to calculate the impact of a, hopefully theoretical, meteor.

"two influential foundations, leading academics, two global testing firms and the video game industry could redefine how schools teach basic skills. Tinkering for the past several months at the Silicon Valley offices of one of the world's largest video game developers, the alliance is pushing to develop materials based on off-the-shelf video games that will get kids ready for "college and career success," a key, largely unmet goal of the USA's education system."

"Computer Gamers Help Push Frontier Of Brain Research"

Here's a handy site that helps students publish three types of documents - a poster, a brochure or a newspaper.  Read Write Think's site is easy to use with an intuitive interface but its real power comes in the fact that students can save incomplete work!  The site lets a user save in a proprietary .RWT format on a usb stick or saved to a network space.  When your next class begins, that same file can be opened so it can be completed and shared as a .PDF

"We are deeply and fundamentally attracted, in fact, to games: those places where efforts and excellence are rewarded, where the challenges and demands are severe, and where success often resembles nothing so much as a distilled version of the worldly virtues of dedicated learning and rigorously co-ordinated effort."