This week a student designed a project to learn the conventions of video game reviews. He decided to review the multi-player co-op mode of Portal 2, a new physics-based puzzler mixing teleportation, mad science, and a strangely endearing passive-aggressive, maniacal artificial intelligence.
We negotiated the project in that I asked him not to play the single-player [...]
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Posted 26 April 2011
† Chad
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Also tagged: Dual stick controllers, Game-based learning, Hacking, Hacks, Minecraft, Platformers, Puzzle-based games, Sandbox games, Student aptitudes, Student collaboration, Student leadership
Our games-based #engchat on the ramification of language arts is almost here! I’m so happy and grateful to be joining you at 7 PM EST on Monday, March 21st, to talk about how games and game mechanics can inform teaching and learning.
Over the past few months as I’ve planned and read for this #engchat, my [...]
I watched a video game trailer last week – an amazing one – that raised for me this bevy of non-rhetorical questions:
Are my kids collaborating on anything, let alone a multi-media project?
Am I acknowledging and asking kids to use their non-print talents in my classroom?
Am I admitting in my teaching that print speaks to other [...]
School is a lot like a board game, but today’s best games aren’t like school. Game designers have found ways to embed mastery learning in flow-inducing experiences that offer learners increasingly self-directed opportunities for goal-setting and problem solving. Moreover, game designers have found ways to provide near constant feedback to learners. Customization is another hallmark [...]
Last year I spent Winter Break reading two wildly disparate books about child-parent relationships gone bad. This year I played Kairosoft’s Game Dev Story on my iPad – and read #blog4reform (you should, too).
Game Dev Story puts you in charge of a game development company. You develop games and fulfill contracts in pursuit of [...]
In my recently adopted US history class, we’re thinking about the price of colonization. After comparing and contrasting some before and after pics of New York, we’re painting our own unspoiled landscapes based on photographs found online. Thereafter we’re going to make lists of everything that we’d bring along with us to start new colonies. [...]
Tweeps near and far have me thinking about the game layer, gamification, and how to curate games in the classroom or school library.
Our own work in class to master Mario Kart as cooperative cycling teams has hit a kind of instructional equilibrium: everyone is happy to play, but the teams who have mastered the rotating [...]
Gowalla is a augmented reality (AR) social exploration app that lets you pick up, drop, and trade virtual items as you check-in or become the founder of various locations. I used it at #ncte10 last week so my wife and kids could make sure I was in sessions and not at Disney World, where I [...]
If we can teach kids to make fun learning games (fun can indeed be measured, and learning can indeed be fun), then we’ll be helping them create experiential learning opportunities for others that have characteristics of narrative (plot, characterization) and informational texts (GUI, games manuals), as well as scripted expository texts that rely heavily on [...]
“Games are not fun because they’re games, but when they are well designed.”
- Sebastian Deterding, “Pawned”
Games futurist Jesse Schell of Gamepocalypse Now recently pointed towards two presentations by “gamification” researcher Sebastian Deterding: “Just add points?” and “Pawned.” Taken together Deterding’s presentations offer useful insight into contemporary game design and the elements, like fun, that we [...]
