Tag Archives: educational games

Ever since the Joan Ganz Cooney Center opened its doors in 2007, we’ve met a lot of great developers who are producing games for kids. And one piece of advice that they are all looking for is how to get their products funded and distributed as widely as possible– whether the K-12 institutional system, or the App Store. We’ve been listening, and we want to help. Two years ago, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we convened…

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…

Well, it’s been just around a year since I received an email that AdditionBlocks had won the 2012 STEM Video Game Challenge for one of the Educator entry streams. I have really enjoyed being a part of this contest, and thanks to the Cooney Center, PBS, and E-Line Media, a lot of doors have opened to promote the game. Pretty quickly after receiving the news, I (practically) ran out to purchase an iPad2 and a MacBook to build for iOS…

Executive Director Michael Levine and former Cooney Center fellow Sarah Vaala have co-authored Games for Learning: Vast Wasteland or a Digital Promise?, the conclusion to the new anthology Digital Games: A Context for Cognitive Development, edited by Fran C. Blumberg and Shalom M. Fisch. The volume takes a broad look at the many positive impacts digital games can have for children’s cognitive and social development, opening with a call for developmental psychologists to recognize how digital games present an important…

On a bright sunny morning after a February snowstorm, kids and their parents were lined up outside the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in Manhattan. But they weren’t there solely to see the many museum treasures. They were there to attend a workshop to make video games that they will enter into the National STEM Video Game Challenge. The excitement was palpable as the kids funneled into a room outfitted with laptops. “Do you have an idea for a…

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…