Category Archives: Conferences and Community Events

At Games for Change (G4C) last week, the audience was treated to a number of interesting discussions and keynotes surrounding current issues of video game play for learning and social change. Among the hot topics were of course the impending “Gamepocalypse” that will arguably come as a result of intense “Gamification,” but there was also measured discussion around how people are working to find out where “gamifying” is most helpful to learning and education, and plenty of evidence of exciting…

Lots of people have asked us when speaker presentations from last month’s Leadership Forum would be available online. It’s taking us awhile to get the video edited down, but we are pleased to say that many of our speakers’ presentation slides are now available online. You can see them now on slideshare.net. If you’re wondering whether a speaker had a presentation or not, simply check out the agenda and concurrent panels on the Learning from Hollywood site; if we have…

According to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the typical American child — age 8 to 18 — spends no less than seven and a half hours a day engaged with media. According to research from Sesame Workshop and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, younger children are also consuming media heavily — about 4 hours a day for the typical five year old. Television, cell phones, computers, etc. are not just part of these children’s lives — in a very…

Makeda Mays Green is the Director of Education and Research for Digital Media at Sesame Workshop. We were lucky to have her join us in LA for the Leadership Forum in May. She shares her thoughts on the event and some of her favorite takeaways.   The “Learning from Hollywood” forum was nothing short of amazing! It presented a rare opportunity to connect leaders from the entertainment industry with educational experts from around the country. Over the course of two…

Al Gore doesn’t know THAT much about video games but who cares? He’s Al Gore, and he believes enough in their potential to have given the keynote speech today at the 8th Annual Games for Change conference at NYU where he pronounced, “Games are the new normal.” Gore is a warm and generous speaker and he gave plenty of credit where it was due, in particular to Bing Gordon, a partner at investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as…

Last week, Zachary Levine shared his thoughts on the future of educational games after attending the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. Here is his report on the Games and Learning Summit and the highlights from the Expo. The 2nd annual Games and Learning Summit, organized by the Entertainment Software Association as a special dialogue session developed for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, included inspiring talks from several experts on the role digital games can play in advancing education. As several dozen…

… stays at App Camp?  I certainly hope not!  Because I was lucky enough to attend last month’s Dust or Magic Children’s App Design Institute, and the pure magic of this conference needs to be shared. For the second year in a row, an intimate group interested in children’s apps came together for a three-day event that included presentations from designers, reviewers and other industry experts as well as demos and brainstorm sessions.  There is no way I can summarize…

As an intern at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, I was fortunate enough to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) held on June 7-9. I was also able to partake in the 2nd annual Games and Learning Summit on the morning of June 7th, where a few dozen electronic industry leaders, top White House officials, philanthropic leaders from the Gates and MacArthur Foundations and academic experts such as James Paul Gee discussed the important role of game-based education in the…

Photos by Matt Beard Photography. Learn more about the 2011 Leadership Forum at www.learningfromhollywood.org.

Games for Change is the leading global advocate for supporting and making games for social impact. The annual Games for Change Festival is the largest gaming event in New York City and the only international event uniting “games for change” creators, the public, civil society, academia, the gaming industry and media. The 8th Annual Festival is happening in New York City on June 20-22. This year’s lineup includes Vice President Al Gore, Pulitzer Prize winner Sheryl WuDunn (co-author of Half…