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The Guide to Digital Games and Learning

The Guide to Digital Games and Learning
MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning How can games unlock a rich world of learning? This is the big question at the heart of the growing games and learning movement that’s gaining momentum in education. The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning [PDF] explains key ideas in game-based learning, pedagogy, implementation, and assessment. The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning started as a series of blog posts written by Jordan Shapiro with support from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and the Games and Learning Publishing Council. Here's a preview of the table of contents: Introduction: Getting in the Game (Page 4) An overview of games in the classroom from Katie Salen Tekinbaş, executive director of the Institute of Play. What the Research Says About Gaming and Screen Time (Page 6) Much of the research around digital games and screen time is evolving. Related:  Gamification, Gbl, EducationGAMES & GAMING

Kids Games - Educational Computer Games Online | TurtleDiary Making Games: The Ultimate Project-Based Learning | The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning Part 6 of MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning. As game-based learning increases in popularity, it’s easy to get pigeon-holed into one particular way of thinking about it or one way of employing it. This is true regardless of how teachers feel about gaming in the classroom, whether they’re for or against it. One common objection to game-based learning is that students will sit in front of screens being taught at. In previous posts in this series, I’ve argued that because games involve systems thinking, they contextualize learning. “Games are just simulators with an internal incentive structure (often dopamine based). However, virtual simulations of hands-on experience are not the same as tangibly engaging with the world. Fortunately, few people are calling for games to replace school as we know it. Just as there are many apps and platforms designed to teach kids coding, there are also many apps and platforms that make it easy for kids to design their own games.

Gamifying Education: Do We Know How to Gamify the Classroom? Gamification in many parts of education is a sham. Listening to the researchers and experts in this area has convinced me of that. If you’re interested in making your classroom more intriguing and powerful, read on. We can do better. Who Is Shaping The Gamifying Education Conversation? In this week’s conversation with Australian Gamer and researcher Lauren Ferro we all went on a bit of a rant about the ridiculous state of badges in education.Teacher Alice Keeler uses games all the time (and doesn’t give grades).Sixth grade teacher Michael Matera reinvented his whole sixth grade classroom as a Games Based classroom and shares how he did it.A Higher Ed Panel had a powerful conversation for why we need games in highered. All of these are YouTube videos that have been recorded over the past week and a half as part of the Open Online Community (called an OOC) focusing on games in education. I have 3 take aways from the learning so far: #1: The Way We’re Doing Many Badges In Education Is A Joke

ADRIFT: Create your own Interactive Fiction Beyond Grades: Do Games Have a Future As Assessment Tools? | ASSESSMENT Most tests represent a snapshot of one moment in the trajectory of a student’s academic journey, extrapolating what the student has learned overall. There are plenty of ways educators are trying to supplement those tests with more nuanced, formative assessments. With the advent of game-based learning, educators have been investigating how data collected from video game play could provide insight into the way students think as they explore new concepts. A report from the game developers, learning specialists and psychometricians involved with GlassLab’s project SimCityEDU finds that there’s great potential for games and assessment, but a lot of work to be done before games are used as primary assessment tools. SimCityEDU is a game created to introduce environmental science to middle school students. “The state of mind that game designers are chasing is similar to what teachers are trying to do, which is get students in the zone of proximal development,” Kamenetz said. Katrina Schwartz

Games in Education: Teacher Takeaways This August I attended the Games in Education Symposium, a free, two-day event held in upstate New York. Co-presented by 1st Playable Productions, it focused on practical implementations of game-based learning for K-12 teaching. Much of what I learned there has made its way into my lesson planning for this current school year. Game design professor and Multiplayer Classroom author Lee Sheldon gave the first day's keynote address. Paul Darvasi gave the second day's keynote about alternate reality games (ARGs). Students as Designers There were several workshops about teaching game design. I learned more about the basics of paper prototyping, the paper-and-pencil testing of game mechanics prior to being digitally rendered. Have a low barrier to adoption (no technology needed!) The argument can be made that most commercial board games (off-the-shelf, from Scattegories to Settlers of Catan) meet Common Core State Standards. Assessing with Games I presented at Games in Education, too.

Gamification, 10 buoni esempi di aziende che giocano Fabio Viola«I giochi a oggi sono il miglior strumento mai inventato per motivare le persone e incollarle a uno schermo: ecco perché le aziende utilizzano sempre più spesso la gamification per aumentare l’engament con i propri utenti/clienti, rafforzare la loyalty al brand, migliorare processi e rendere meno noiosi alcuni compiti». A parlare è Fabio Viola, esperto di gamification, game designer, autore del blog gameifications.com, coordinatore didattico del master in Engagement & Gamification dello IED Milano e membro del comitato scientifico del master in Gamification dell’Università Tor Vergata a Roma. Un guru della materia, insomma, che ci tiene a sgombrare subito il campo dalle definizioni non corrette del termine gamification. A Fabio Viola, che è stato anche ospite di EconomyUpTv (GUARDA LA VIDEOINTERVISTA), abbiamo chiesto di raccontarci dieci casi in cui le aziende hanno utilizzato la gamification con efficacia. Ecco la sua lista. Zombies, Run! English Attack! quant’altro.

Could Video Games Measure Skills That Tests Can’t Capture? Imagine you’re playing a computer game that asks you to design a poster for the school fair. You’re fiddling with fonts, changing background colors and deciding what activity to feature: Will a basketball toss appeal to more people than a pie bake-off? Then, animal characters — maybe a panda or an ostrich — offer feedback on your design. You can choose whether to hear a compliment or a complaint: “The words are overlapping too much,” or, “I like that you put in the dates.” You can use their critiques as guides to help you revise your poster. This little Web-based game isn’t just a game. “In our assessments we make little fun games, and to do well at the games you need to learn something,” says Dan Schwartz, the director of the AAA Lab at Stanford University. Schwartz is among a new breed of researchers who are applying the mechanics of games to the science of psychometrics — the measurement of the mind. Right now, he’s working on a series of video games called Choicelets.

Generalization & Game-Based Learning: What Parents & Educators Need to Know - LearningWorks for Kids One of the most common themes I hear about in my clinical practice is inconsistent learning. “Jacob knew all of his spelling words when we studied them at home last night, but received a 60 on his spelling test’” or “Emma knows where every American Girl doll is in her room, but can’t find her homework in her backpack.” While some of the inconsistencies we see in children can be attributed to motivation and memory, much of it is directly related to difficulties with generalization. Psychologists define generalization as the transfer of an action learned in one setting to a different setting, so that individuals are fully able to utilize the skills they have learned in one environment in various settings, with other people, and with different materials. Parents use the concept of generalization on a daily basis to help their kids learn skills across various settings. Help your children to identify the thinking skills they use in their video-game and digital-media use.

Augmented Reality in Education | Işıl Boy's Blog String Augmented reality is a 3D learning environment which connects real and virtual world. It provides interactive tools for learning, and fosters informal learning. Besides, augmented reality increases motivation and engages learners. My Top 3 Augmented Reality Apps: Quick Writer: is a text editor which enable you to watch things while you are typing. Digital Storytelling with Augmented Reality: Zooburst: is a digital storytelling app that lets you create your own 3D pop-up book. How to Create Augmented Reality: You can create augmented reality with Metaio! Some Articles on Augmented Reality: Why Kids Should Make the Video Games They Love to Play When educator Lynn Koresh hears from kids that they want a career doing something with computers, she asks, “To do what with computers?” Adults often encourage kids to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills, and computing classes are usually a first stop. But Koresh knows it’s the real-world applications of computational thinking and coding language skills that bring such knowledge to life. She reasoned that most middle school students are already playing video games and might respond well to a unit on how to design, create, test and promote video games. Along the way, she’s also teaching them about digital citizenship and entrepreneurship. “I wanted to give kids exposure to what it means to have a career using computers,” said Koresh, technology coordinator at Edgewood Campus School in Madison, Wisconsin. She gave students the task of designing a game using Gamestar Mechanic. As students develop their games, they test them on one another throughout the semester.

3 Steps to Creating an Awesome Virtual Museum in Class You're spending an afternoon browsing the exhibits at an art museum. If you're anything like me, you'd probably appreciate the art a lot more if you could bring someone along that could explain the history and nuances of the pieces on display. Now imagine pointing a device at the painting and seeing it morph into a dynamic video giving you all the information you wanted about the art. Welcome to augmented reality. Virtual reality replaces the real world with an artificial, digital environment. The Virtual Museum I've worked with teachers at several schools to created virtual museums - student created exhibits that use augmented reality to display student videos when a device is pointed at an exhibit. We used a popular augmented reality app called Aurasma. Visitors were sent an email asking them to download the free Aurasma app and bring their device. We talk about the importance of "depth" in education. I'm sure you'll come up with lots of ideas of your own. A. Media: Create video. B.

Can Games Make High-Stakes Tests Obsolete? | The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning Part 5 of MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning. Nobody likes high-stakes testing. The problems are well documented. At least since John Dewey, educational theorists and scholars have been clear about the inherent shortcomings of thinking about education in terms of standardized, quantifiable outcomes. Howard Gardner, John H. and Elisabeth A. Even if you disagree with his theory about different learning styles, it’s hard to disagree with the notion that making learning personal to students is beneficial. But as teachers know, bringing that personalized level of attention and assessment in a classroom of 20 or 30 students is a challenge: identifying individualized learning objectives on a daily basis, imagining measurements of incremental achievement, monitoring for mastery, and undertaking ongoing formative and substantive assessments. On the simplest level, adapting might mean changing the order in which the student is presented with challenges. It’s not too hard to imagine.

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