Category Archives: Games and Learning

** The results of this survey are now available in the Digital Games and Family Life infographic series ** Back in 2012, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center embarked on a multi-stakeholder game design project, also known as “Hard Fun: Learning Mathematics,” funded by the NSF with lead designers at E-Line Media and premier researchers in neuroscience from University of Rochester and Johns Hopkins University. The goal was to design and research an educational game that both parents and kids would…

A new study, called A-GAMES (Analyzing Games for Assessment in Math, ELA/Social Studies, and Science) has been funded by the Gates Foundation to study how video games support teachers’ classroom formative assessment practice. If you are a K-12 teacher, you can help shape and inform the research by completing a survey.   There is growing support for the use of digital video games as part of K-12 teachers’ classroom routines. As with all educational technologies, the most frequently asked question…

The London Educational Games Meetup group (or LEGup, as it’s become known), was started just over two years ago by Kirsten Campbell Howes, an educational specialist and game designer. At first, it was a small gathering in a room above a pub, where a few like-minded games makers and enthusiasts would show what they were working on, ask for feedback, and share their experiences. Two years later, LEGup has nearly 800 members (including games developers, teachers, investors and others), has…

Today brought some good news as one of our proposed panels was selected as part of the SXSWedu conference slated for next March. The session, “Lost in Translation: Applying the Latest Game Research,” emerged from the 700 submitted ideas to the major education and innovation conference. It’s exciting news for a couple of reasons. First, it is affirmation of one of the major initiatives we are about to launch at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. We have been working through…

Educational psychology has long recognized the impact of informal learning in child development. In fact, most educators and psychologists believe that young students learn more from other kids with shared perspectives and experiences than from adults so far removed from childhood. Whether at home, on the playground, or in the classroom, students assimilate, construct, and in-turn teach and reflect on new knowledge better in informal peer communities than more traditional “instructivist” settings. So wouldn’t it be amazing if we could…

This post was originally published in the Huffington Post as part of TED Weekends as part of the “Gaming for Life” series inspired by Jane McGonigal’s 2012 TEDTalk. Jane McGonigal charged me up for more than the 7.5 minutes of life extension she promised. Yes, practicing her four “resiliencies” through gameplay may help make us happier and more productive, but, like her, my interests are in accelerating social change. So if her concussion inspired a game with the power to…

EdSurge has assembled a great primer on  games and learning Playing Games in School: When games make a difference in education. This online resource takes a high-level look at Games and Learning and features insights from leading scholars and practitioners in the field, including James Paul Gee and Joel Levin. The collection features a guide to twenty great educational games and examines the many roles that games can play in education, especially when students create their own. The Cooney Center’s…

Back in 2010, Motion Math was a finalist in the first Cooney Center Prizes for Mobile Learning. They’ve continued to make some amazing apps since then, including Motion Math Zoom, Motion Math: Hungry Fish, and more.  CEO and co-founder Jacob Klein shares some of the inspiration behind the creation of their latest app, Questimate!, a game that makes estimation fun. Our new estimation game Questimate! came out a couple weeks ago. It’s the first game where players make their own…

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and E-Line Media are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge. This year, we received close to 4,000 entries — and not only did more students enter the competition than in previous years, but their games were more complex, challenging and creative than ever before. We were blown away by the energy that students put into their games, the number of platforms they used to develop them (over 15!)…

If the investment in digital technology and gaming in schools is going to continue to grow, it is up to game developers and companies to do a better job sharing information about what games work and for what kind of learners. That was the message from the deputy director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who oversees investment in what the foundation dubs the next generation of K-12 education in the U.S. last week. Stacey Childress said the coming…