Musings and findings about teaching with games. Created by the learning community of EDTEC 670 at San Diego State University.
D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), the program for substance abuse prevention for middle school kids, is revamping its curriculum to make the program more effective. Previously, the program consisted of mostly lectures delivered by police officers. Studies demonstrated the program was not effective in helping kids avoid drugs. The new lessons are more interactive and include games and role-playing. Initial test results show the new curriculum to be more effective in giving students the skills and knowledge they need to stay away from drugs. Read all about it in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
A Lesson in Making Learning Fun
So says Senator Joe Leiberman (D-Connecticut) about "Vice City", Rockstar Games' newest addition to their "Grand Theft Auto" series. Gratuitous crime, violence, prostitutes and profanity combined with the game's objective (find the guys who stole your cocaine and kill them) are some of the elements in Vice City that are contributing to its pre-release status as the groundbreaker in complete lack of morality/ethics in video games. The game is due to be released on Tuesday, and received unbiased front page coverage in today's Styles section of the New York Times.
We all know by now that creating a great e-learning environment takes more than converting traditional content and pedagogy into a technical format. But how do you create compelling e-learning content that gets learners interested and keeps them coming back? Well, the key is to make sure your learning environment embraces self-directive skills that are intrinsic to the learner. Translated into 670 speak this means motivation, self reliance, self confidence, and risk tolerance.
I was recently perusing the NETS (National Educational Technoloy Standards) for Teachers website
One of the biggest offenders for classroom boredom may be the lecture. Thiagi, in the October '02 edition of his Play for Performance newsletter, introduces his technique for Interactive Lecture or Lecture Games. This technique incorporates the advantages of lecture as an instructional format (efficiency) while attempting to remove or reduce its disadvantages (boring).
Teachers in K-6 might find this interesting. Fun Brain has this curriculum guide for teachers and it allows teachers to select online games for their students, according to subject, grade level, and title. For example, I played Grammar Gorilla, one that reviews parts of speech, nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc..., which I think would be perfect for 2nd graders who are barely learning what each part of speech is. I found that most of the focus in these games is on language arts and math. The instructions are not too terribly difficult to read and understand. I can see myself using this web site with 2nd graders and above. It feels a little like "worksheets," but just on the computer. I can see the novelty of some of these games wearing off after a while.
A friend introduced me to beermogul.com, a highly entertaining and fairly educational site on how to open and run a business. Once you've logged in, you are given 1 million beerbucks to open your own virtual bar, pub, or brewery complete with features, amenities and advertising campaigns. You can then go on the BeerMarket to sell or acquire your beer. Overall, a great way to learn about fundamental business operations...and beer making. --t. thai
okay, so the onion isn't exactly news, but this piece is funny and hits the mark for our boredom analysis
I've used The Phonics Game many times with 1st and 2nd grade learners and it works really well, especially in small groups of about 4-5. I have never used The Math Game or The Vocabulary Game but I ssume they are similarly effective. In case you are unfamiliar, it The Phonics Game is described as "a total phonetic reading system, cleverly disguised as a series of fun, interactive games" and it truly works. It has a variety of difficulty levels and is useful at home as well as the classroom.
Neil Stephenson ends his commentary with the thought-provoking statement “This time, gamers will also face the ultimate challenge: social interaction.” He’s talking about the up and coming online game, THE SIMS ONLINE. He adds, “The Sims promises to be one of the most interesting human experiments in the history of the Net.”
My friend Jonathan Kaye, author of Flash MX for Interactive Simulation, published a white paper called How to Build Product Simulations with Flash MX. This interesting paper describes the process for developing device simulations to be used for training. Jonathan's emphasis is on using simulations toward achieving performance objectives. There are many interesting learning applications for the practical methods described in this paper and in the book. There's more information at the Web site supporting his book.
Spy Games
Interested in reading more about the difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation? The Searle Center for Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University publishes this bibliography of articles on Learning Theory and Student Motivation. Mark Lepper's work is included in the list.
The Fortress of infinitude: a random repository of interests and information has some random thoughts "published" from game designers. Though the folks quoted are a wee more prominent than us Ed Techies, their thoughts are somewhat similar...
Over the next few years, cell phones are going to become more versatile as they take over the functions of your Palm Pilot and your GameBoy.
Wireless Gaming Review covers all the latest in this realm.
In Netscape's last days as a viable company, they gave away the source code of their once cutting edge browser to the open source movement. The hope was that volunteer hackers everywhere would upgrade the code dazzlingly for the sheer satisfaction of it. And in fact they did, though it took several years. The history and results of all this are described in a new book Creating Applications with Mozilla. Mozilla is at least as good a browser as Internet Explorer. But, as indicated by the book's title, Mozilla isn't just a browser, it's a platform for doing all kinds of communication tasks. Here's something new to me: they're using Mozilla to develop games.
Ian Parberry, author of several books on gaming and a professor at the University of North Texas, lists his Laws of Game Programming. He also lists the Laws of Combat.
If you needed any evidence that board games have a long history....
Although a few months outdated, this was an interesting article from the BBC about how simulation and adventure games stimulate (not 'simulate' :) learning in elementary age students. One of the most interesting points of the article was the finding that when questioned, the kids in the study stated that the most important aspect of the game was teamwork. Maybe this blows a hole in the theory that video games breed a bunch of social recluses who don't know how to interact with other kids...
I went to the IGDA meeting and it was really interesting. They had a presentation on Maya (you can download a free personal learning edition that's good for one year) and also on DFC Intelligence, a marketing research company that specializes in games research.
The Bad Fads Museum is primarily a page to plug a book, but it's an interesting way to examine what people do for no extrinsic rewards. Hula hoops, mood rings, streaking, Pez dispensers... these are a few of our favorite things. Is there an explanation for these things to be found in the theories and models of Keller, Csikszentmihalyi, Malone, and Lepper? Could we, if we sat down and thought about it for awhile, predict the next big collectible?
This would be an interesting study to look in to. Researchers at Kent State University are studying how computers, particularly handhelds, affect the rate at which students learn. So far, the research seems to indicate that student do learn quicker when the learning involved technology. This study certainly supports Prensky's notion that use of digital games would be much more effective in training the "digital generation", than traditional classroom based (and often boring) training.
After posting up 40,000 jokes and analyzing 2 million ratings, scientists have revealed the world's funniest joke And here it is...
