Navta Associates

MovingLearningGamesForward, by Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, and Katie Salen With contributions by Jason Haas, Jennifer Groff and Dan Roy, is one of the most useful reports about games in education that I’ve read in a long time.  This is an Education Arcade paper, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The report intelligently answers questions regarding the use of video games in education, and provides numerous resources for continued investigation. “Educational games” are placed in rich context, including historical background and recommendations for implementation in the “classroom”. Very much a must-read for anyone even vaguely interested in this timely debate.

The Game Education Summit is the only conference where the video game industry and academics from around the world can come together to have meaningful conversations about the future of game development.

The Game Education Summit has a steady focus on the various stages of development of game education programs as well as the latest research in game studies. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from various academic institutions along with video game industry professionals who are interested in finding solutions to the critical shortage of skilled professionals entering the video game industry.

There is a new game development engine, Dinoworms, which provides a toolbox that anyone can use to create games. There are a few other similar tools available, and I haven’t spent a lot of time investigating this one yet. Upon first glance, and poking through the online demos, it looks worthwhile. This product was designed specifically for the education market, to help teachers create educational games to inspire and foster learning in their students.

Q4 Technologies is marketing some really neat products! The WowWee Robot and GoRobo software can pair up to provide kids with an incredibly fun learning experience. Kids learn design, programming, and sequencing, among other skills. The robot designs are relatively gender-neutral, so girls and boys can share in this experience equally.

Wish I had one!

I finally purchased my first video game just for me. It’s tough to get gaming time in my household, with two pre-teen boys and an adult male already in competition for playtime (kids are only allowed on weekends, but who has time during the week nights, anyway?!) At any rate, I’ve now played Little Big Planet a few times, and I’m fascinated mostly by the graphics and the cute and customizable sack people.

It is quite entertaining for everyone else in the house when I sit down to game, because apparently it doesn’t really help to move the controller up, down, and sideways while playing. Why move your hands or arms when the thumbs will suffice? Well, my method works for me, and it’s not all bad to be the center of attention–even if their sentiment is more “amused pity” than anything else.

They watched for a while, we played together a bit, then my 13-yr-old commandeered the game, mastered the full-on level editor that comes with Little Big Planet, and created his own graphics and levels.

It would be a stretch to say that this game has significant educational value. It makes sense that my more artistically inclined son was the one to get interested in creating his own levels, layering rich textures and colors, and approaching the gaming space with a designer’s sensibility. He was the one of the two who spent hours earlier in the school year working on his creations in “Programming with Alice” (see an earlier blog entry for more info on Alice), even above and beyond what his teacher required. Maybe he has an interest in programming? Given his lack of interest in hard math, and preference for the artistic side, it seems highly unlikely that he would be interested in actual coding.

I would summarize the experience he has gained by creating Little Big Planet levels on a par with reading a really good book–one that opens your eyes to wonderful new ideas,  broadens your perspective, and may spark an interest in some future endeavor.

Jason Rohrer

We’ve followed the work of Jason Rohrer for a while, and a recent article in Esquire gives an informative overview of Jason and his life. His emphasis is on providing an artistic experience, not necessarily educational, at least not in the traditional sense of education. His newest game Passage is worth trying! It’s fascinating how Jason can provide gameplayers with such an emotional experience.

This video shows how a group of kids have created a game that deals with a high-interest issue for them: bullying. Another example of how empowering students and giving them the right tools can lead to innovation.

Image via Wikipedia

There are many educators, adults, publishers, gaming companies, and others who are noodling over various aspects of educational gaming for kids. These people are asking themselves and each other . . . Should we allow/encourage/create more gaming opportunities? . . . Will more gaming be detrimental to our kids’ educational experience?

A number of tools already exist for kids to just do it themselves. Here’s a great one: Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, in collaboration with the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Intel Foundation, and MIT Media Lab research consortia.

“Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design”

Currently, “there are 246,143 projects with a total of 6,212,497 scripts and 1,926,131 sprites created by 39,379 contributors of our 180,657 registered members. That’s a lot of Scratch-ing!”