Tag Archives: assessment

March 7, 2024 Austin Convention Center Room 12AB The current edtech market is full of products that claim to fulfill lesson plans and make assessment easier for teachers. But what if, in addition to helping kids master important concepts, digital products could make learning truly impactful, and help diverse students and teachers feel empowered and engaged? We’ll talk about how we can bring kids and teachers into the design process in order to create kid-centered products that students enjoy using.…

This guest post by Anusha Subramanyam, PhD, BCBA-D and Tammy Kwan of Cognitive Toybox describes results from a pilot study in which Cognitive ToyBox, a game-based assessment program, was implemented in preschool classrooms to help teachers monitor their students’ progress.   Early childhood education programs require accurate, ongoing assessment to help students reach their school readiness goals. Our recent report, The Promise of Game-Based Assessment in Early Childhood Education, describes the challenge of current assessment systems and opportunities where direct assessment…

Before the Future of Childhood: Immersive Media and Child Development salon took place in November 2018, we invited experts to share their visions about the ways VR and AR might impact childhood 10 years from now. Lisa Castaneda, Co-Founder and CEO of foundry10, shares an optimistic view of VR’s potential to shape learning experiences in the future.   Foundry10 is a research organization working across many domains, and we have been studying VR and students for several years. Today, students…

Part 5 of MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning. Nobody likes high-stakes testing. The problems are well documented. But maybe games can help to change the way we approach assessment. At least since John Dewey, educational theorists and scholars have been clear about the inherent shortcomings of thinking about education in terms of standardized, quantifiable outcomes. In order for instructional strategies to be successful at a large scale, they need to take individual differences under consideration. Not all students are…

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…

In late September, more than 60 constituents from various sectors including research, policy, government, technology and investment gathered in Washington, D.C. for the “What Tech Works for Students? Using Data to Determine What Technology is Driving Outcomes” symposium hosted by the Department of Education, Battelle Memorial Institute, and Tucker Capital. Groups like the Gates Foundation, The White House, Common Sense Media, as well as the Joan Ganz Cooney Center were part of the lineup — all of these organizations have…

What if algebra were more addictive than Angry Birds? Imagine an eight-year old mastering algebra on an iPad by sorting dragons into boxes. Or, what if middle schoolers could become proficient with fractions by playing a platform game similar to Super Mario Bros? How about if the doorway to mastering Newtonian physics involved ninth graders and digital levers? Now, what if a video game could both teach students to argue a point in an essay, read Great Books closely for…

How does one know that an educational experience is actually helping students learn? Our company Motion Math makes educations games for the iPad and iPhone that let kids play with numbers. It’s easy for us to think, as we’re making our apps, and watching students play them, to believe that learning is happening, especially because we spend a lot of time ensuring that our designs follow good pedagogical and usability principles. However, the history of educational technology is littered with many false promises and disappointing results, most recently given an overview by Matt Richtel of The New York Times. For these reasons, and for our own self-understanding, it’s important that we sometimes hold our learning technologies up to scientific scrutiny.

In January, I attended a workshop dedicated to games, assessment and learning hosted by the MacArthur and Gates Foundations and the USC Game Innovation Lab. The workshop brought together game designers, educators, and researchers to work together on designing games around various curricula topics that would be engaging, educational, and contain features to allow for the collection and feedback about how players were faring when engaged in the game. The conversation went beyond what players could learn from games: We…