Category Archives: Gaming

Hello everyone! My name is Marty Esterman and I am the Educator Grand Prize winner for the PBS Kids stream in this year’s STEM Video Game Challenge event for my entry, AdditionBlocks. I have been quite humbled by this whole experience-and I want to thank The Joan Ganz Cooney Center, PBS Kids, E-Line Media, and the AMD Foundation for all their support. I have met some really great people! I also want to thank my wife, Stacy, who has also been…

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to hear from “one of the most influential women in technology,” the creators of “Zombie Yoga,” aNASA research scientist, the founder of Atari AND Chuck E. Cheese, a classroom teacher working in Hong Kong, the White House’s “video game czar” and a bunch of 12 year old girls designing their own math games in Brooklyn, within the span of a couple of hours, without leaving a 2 block radius. How on earth did I manage to do…

Last month, we released the results of our first QuickStudy on e-books. This report, “Teacher Attitude about Digital Games in the Classroom,” was inspired by the continued growth of e-readers — the Kindles, Nooks, and iPads that are almost ubiquitous now — and the exploding popularity of e-books for children. At the Cooney Center, we study how children’s learning is impacted by the technologies that surround them. There’s no doubt that kids are drawn to digital media — we’ve all…

Dr. Idit Harel Caperton, President and Founder of the World Wide Workshop, is passionate about getting more young girls and women excited about becoming leaders in STEM-related fields.This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post and is reprinted here with permission. This is the second of two posts about integrating more women in the gaming industry: read the first post here. In this piece, she focuses on how to get girls and young women the support they need to dive into…

The 9th Annual Games for Change Festival is less than two weeks away! We are thrilled that our own Research Consultant Jessica Millstone and BrainPOP’s Senior Director, Educators Experience, Allisyn Levy, will present the findings of the first national survey on teacher attitudes towards games in the classroom. Their presentation will take place on Wednesday, June 20 at 12:10 in the Tishman Auditorium at NYU. Jeff Ramos of Games for Change took this opportunity to ask her a few questions about the research and its…

I’ve been spending a lot of time on a playground lately. However, this playground doesn’t have swings or tetherball or a basketball court; this one—the PLAYground—is a transmedia learning tool being developed at the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC. The PLAYground is the brainchild of Erin Reilly, Managing Director for the Innovation Lab and someone I’ve gotten to work with closely through the JGCC’s partnership with the Lab. Developing the PLAYground is one element of a larger project on participatory learning,…

Still buzzing from the exciting events of the previous evening, many participants from the STEM Video Game Challenge‘s Celebration of Success attended The Atlantic’s second annual Technologies in Education Forum on May 22 in Washington, D.C.  The Forum continued a lively discussion around the role that games play in STEM learning, with editorial staff from The Atlantic asking probing (often skeptical) questions and speakers generally offering optimistic answers. A panel on “Framing the Role Games Will Play in Future Learning” addressed whether there is a danger that…

The 9th Annual Games for Change Festival will be taking place on June 18 – 20 in New York City. There is less than a month to register, so be sure to get your tickets now to catch the following featured keynote speakers: the legendary Nolan Bushnell, “father of the video game industry” and founder of Atari Corporation, leading games for change evangelist Jane McGonigal (Author of the New York Times best seller Reality Is Broken and Chief Creative Officer for SuperBetter Labs), linguist…

An adventure game where your character moves around by manipulating the attractive and repulsive forces of the atom. A 3D battle against pathogens inside the human body. An early learning game starring a shark that teaches first graders about inequalities. They could be the latest releases from a premiere educational game studio, but these and 14 other incredible games were all made by students between the ages of 10 and 18: the winners of the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge Youth Prize. On Monday, May…

Allison Mishkin teaches at a game design camp for middle school students. Here she shares some of the lessons that she’s learned — and tries to impart — to her students during this week-long sessions.   A group of students stumble into a computer lab on a bright spring day, unsure why their parents wanted them out of the house on their vacations. By the end of the day, they would emerge optimistic and excited for the week to come.…