Monthly Archives: January 2013
8 More Game Portals to Find The Right Games for Your Lessons
It is always helpful to find the right games for lessons! Thanks for the post.
We’ve put together “6 Sites to Find The Right Games for Your Lessons“, now here are 8 more sites to find the right games. It’s exciting to see more efforts to help teachers integrating games into learning.
Survey of Electronic Games that Teach
Check out www.wingz2fly.com and select “Search” on the right. You can see information about 1500+ educational computer games. (It will soon be moved to www.i-elearn.org.)
In this project, we have searched for effectiveness studies that have been conducted on educational games that teach and we have searched for any findings those studies may have come to. Dr. Carol L. Redfield, professor of Computer Science at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, has done similar research on games that were available to teach or practice concepts in K-12 curriculum in the 1990s. She found then that there was only one software tool that had any effectiveness…
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A teacher founded company, “Power Up Education”, creates games for learning
“Power Up Education is a small teacher-founded company committed to creating products that promote learning using interactive content, multimedia, educational games, and more. The Power Up story starts with a science teacher named Dan Caldwell. In 2009 Dan was in his 8th year of teaching middle school science in Northern New York State to seventh and eighth graders. During one seventh grade class in which the students were working on writing short stories about traveling through the digestive system from the point of view of the food Dan was asked by his students if he would also write a story. He responded by saying, “Well, how about I write a song instead, since songwriting is a way that I like to tell stories.” While playing the rather silly, yet scientifically accurate song to the class the power of music became instantly clear. The students were engaged in the lesson, they were enjoying themselves, and they were actually LEARNING!
Over the course of the next year Dan worked on creating the sciTunes Human Body Curriculum. During that time Dan realized that the power of this curriculum could be taken even further by using online learning games to engage students even further. To find out more about the sciTunes Curriculum visit www.sciTunes.com. 
In the fall of 2010 Dan entered a human body iPad game in the National STEM Video Game Challenge. The game, now known as Body Adventure With Captain Brainy-Pants! was selected as a finalist for the Developer’s Prize. After attending the finals in Washington D.C. and presenting the games to a panel of experts in the field, Dan was awarded the Best Teacher Made Game Prize!
Power Up Education is committed to taking the sciTunes Curriculum even further. We are currently developing more learning games for a variety of platforms including free for the web. The sciTunes Human Body Curriculum is also being developed as an interactive online curriculum that can be accessed by iPads, Tablets, as well as traditional web browsers on PCs and Macs. There will be much more news to come on this development!
Why the name change? We are now called Power Up Education because we fully intend to take our highly effective teaching strategies found in the sciTunes Curriculum and apply them to other subjects including, Math, Social Studies, Language Arts, and other branches of Science.” – From the company web site – To learn more about “Power Up Education” click here; http://poweruped.com/
The American Library Association endorses video gaming
Rob LeFebvre of GamesBeat found that; “The American Library Association endorses video gaming, placing these in a similar class to board games. The association is clear about whether kids should play video games in libraries: ”Video gaming at the library encourages young patrons to interact with diverse peers, share their expertise with others, including adults, and develop new strategies for gaming and learning.”
Video games are yet another way for kids — and adults — to learn and to interact socially. “Learning a new set of rules, learning new symbols, and reading the text that comes with some video games and RPGs is just as much of an educational effort as reading a book. It’s different, mind you, but still valid. One certainly doesn’t replace another,” said Emily Reeve, a librarian based in Denver.
“Gaming in libraries, whether it’s sitting at a computer playing a video game online or playing a board game with friends, is a sociable experience, especially for kids,” she said in an e-mail conversation with GamesBeat.”
Edgamer podcast # 84 gives “EdGaming a voice – A BIG VOICE!”
On the EdGamer podcast (Episode 84) Zack Gilbert and Gerry James discuss games in Special Education settings, How Minecraft taught my 9-year-old son with Asperger’s to read and write from Patrick Black, Victoria II from Cameron Foster, and BoardGameGeek for d0x3dfrom Niilo in Sweden. Enjoy!
To here this episode of Edgamer click here;
http://edreach.us/2013/01/12/edgamer-84-u-s-government-will-not-build-a-death-star/
The Serious Games Association has created a helpful list of educational games.
The Serious Games Association has developed a helpful list of educational games with detailed information about each one. They also include an option to list new edgames. Enjoy!
“Games are changing the way children learn, helping them think differently and stimulating new ways people of all ages can use their minds. This section of the directory will list games created for use in schools and universities at home learning and vocational training.”
Here are the first three games;
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CyberCIEGE for PC |
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| Education Level(s): 9-12, College/University | Subject(s): Science | |
| CyberCIEGE is a network security simulation packaged as a video game. It covers a broad range of cybersecurity topics. Players purchase and configure computers and network devices to keep demanding users happy (e.g., by providing Internet access) all while protecting assets from a variety of attacks. … | ||
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Past/Present for PC, MAC |
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| Education Level(s): K-6, 9-12 | Subject(s): History | |
| Imagine a learning experience where players are thrust into the everyday hustle and bustle of life in America a century ago. That’s what happens in Past/Present, a fully realized interactive 3-D “virtual world” in which a player “becomes” a fictional character, or “avatar”, who is caught up in the big issues … | ||
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Ludwig for PC |
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| Education Level(s): 9-12 | Subject(s): Science, Physics | |
| OVERVIEW Ludwig is a physics adventure on renewable energy for adventurers of 11 years old and up. It´s a new type of learning game, which not only conveys knowledge, but is also really fun! Ludwig was developed in cooperation with physics specialists, teachers and pupils and is based on the physics … | ||
To read their full list click here;
http://www.seriousgamesdirectory.com/proj/education/
The National Rifle Association makes a shooting game.
Games can teach many subjects and skills. Games can teach you a new language, mathematics, surgery, geometry, engineering, and how to shoot a gun. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has developed a game to teach shooting. Kyle Orland, Gaming Editor for Ars Technia, writes that the “NRA has already had some success at shifting the conversation away from “guns” and back to violent video games. The new app also fits that strategy and, in doing so, might actually do more good than harm for the NRA.” It seems that the NRA has modified its myth – “guns don’t kill people – violent video games and movies kill people”. Orland also adds that “Games can and do affect people deeply every day, but they can’t totally transform someone into a different being. Practice Range won’t make a psychotic killer into a responsible gun owner any more than Black Ops 2 can turn a normal, law-abiding citizen into a murderous shooter. Games can have effects, but only if the player is already predisposed to be receptive to those effects. This is probably why violent crime has actually decreased markedly (PDF) since violent games rose to popularity in the early ’90s, and why there seems to be no correlation between game sales and real gun violence internationally.”
Games can teach many things. Now we need a game that teaches Americans the difference between the gun laws of civilized nations and the gun laws in the United States. We need a game that teaches Americans the difference between the homicide rates in the United States and in the civilized world. One day, the United States of America may pass civilized gun laws. Until that day comes, we live in the United States of Fear – fear in our schools, fear in our theaters, fear in our malls, fear in our churches, and fear every place people come together. The NRA knows that we do not have enough security guards to secure every gathering which might attract a shooter. But the more shootings we have, the more guns the dealers sell, in the United States of Fear.
50 Resources on iPads for Learning
The iPad is the best tool for learning since the book and much more fun!
50 Of The Best Resources On iPads In Education by Tom Vander Ark first appeared on gettingsmart.com
36 Lists of iPad Resources
39 sites for using iPads in classrooms
10 iPad Apps Everyone Should Have– from PC Magazine
10 Must Have iPad Apps for Students and Teachers
10 Ways to Use iPads in Your Classroom
40 iPad Apps Librarians Love
40 Most Awesome iPad Apps for Science Students
50+ iPad Apps By a Geography Teacher
62 Interesting Ways to Use an iPad in the Classroom
100 Incredibly Useful and Free iPad Apps
Best Academic Reference Apps for the iPad– some pay, some free
Five Ways Readers Are Using iPads in the Classroom
How to Access Over 30,000 Free Books For the iPad
How to Set Up Class iPads and iPods
iPad Apps- from Teach With Your iPad Wiki
iPad Apps for Kids in the Classroom
iPad Apps for Physical…
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EdGamer discusses the top 10 video games of 2012 – (and which ones teachers can use)
EdGamer is one of my favorite podcasts. The host, Zack Gilbert, and show contributor, Gerry James, are teachers who play games and use games in the classroom. They have interviewed some of the leading researchers, practitioners, and experts on educational gaming (Dr. James Paul Gee, Dr. Jeremiah McCall, Dr. Lucas Gillispie, Dr. Crystle Martin, Sylvia Martinez, Joel Levin, and Jeff Holmes). This is a great podcast for teachers, parents, and researchers. In the future, I plan to post and discuss their conversations here on Gaming and education. On EdGamer #83, The guys discuss Mashable’s Top 10 Video Games of 2012 and they discus which games teachers may use – and which games they should definitely not use in the classroom. They also give a shout out to yours truly! Thanks guys! I love what you are doing – keep up the good work!
To listen to EdGamer #83 click here
http://edreach.us/2013/01/05/edgamer-83-can-teachers-use-the-top-10-video-games-of-2012/
Gaming and Education 