Tag Archives: games

Part 11 of MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning. Teachers have found many different ways of using digital games in the classroom. But what kind of games are these students playing? And how are teachers incorporating them in the classroom? Last year’s report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, “Games For A Digital Age,” made the distinction between “short-form” and “long-form” learning games. Short-form games are designed to be played during a single class period. “They focus on a particular…

Games in Education is a multi-day symposium which focuses on the topic of using video games to supplement and inspire in-classroom education. Participants span early childhood through post secondary educators in New York’s Capital District and surrounding regions who are interested in finding ways to use video games and related technology to enrich and inspire interest by students in core curriculum topics. The symposium has run annually since 2007 and is free for educators to attend. For more information, visit…

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…

  The photo above was taken last night at NYU’s Skirball Center at the 11th Annual Games for Change Festival Awards Ceremony as these fourteen young people from all over the country were being honored for their achievements as winners of the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge. Gaming has touched the current generation of learners in a new way. The 2013 National STEM Video Game Design Challenge challenged enthusiastic students around the country to look under the hood of…

The Games for Change Festival starts bright and early tomorrow morning in New York City, where game designers, investors, journalists, and researchers will gather for a four-day investigation of the current state of serious gaming. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center will be there, hoping to engage with a community who we believe possesses a cultural connection to the young learners of today. Earlier this month, another game-focused meeting of minds took place in New York, albeit in a more intimate setting and…

This year the Cooney Center attended SXSWedu in full force, with three separate opportunities to share our work on how teachers, researchers, game developers, and investors are bringing true games-based learning to K-12 classrooms.  After presenting with Allisyn Levy of BrainPOP and Julie Evans of Project Tomorrow on Monday, I was able to relax and enjoy the rest of conference, including Michael Levine’s Digital Playground talk on Tuesday and the Games & Learning Publishing Council session later that afternoon. Here…

As a parent of a 4-year-old, I know that mobile apps are a) incredibly popular with preschoolers and b) that getting my daughter to brush her teeth twice a day is HARD.  In my professional role as VP of Digital at The Ad Council, I recently had the opportunity to work on developing Toothsavers, a mobile app for our Children’s Oral Health campaign. The challenge for this campaign was to motivate parents to take action to reduce their children’s risk…

Sandbox Summit, an idea forum focused on the intersection of play, learning and technology invites educators, researchers, developers, and innovators of kid-centric media to this annual event at MIT. Presented by MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and Education Arcade, Sandbox Summit@MIT will highlight some of the minds behind – and in front of- today’s revolutionary ideas, platforms, places and products. From toys and games, to schools, museums, media and marketing, you’ll hear about the ways and whys purposeful designs power playful…

One morning last summer in DeRidder, Louisiana, Angel Acevedo-Martinez’s father came into his room and woke him up with exciting news. Angel’s 6th grade math teacher, Miss Sanchez was on the phone to tell him that his game, The Arcade, had been chosen as a winner in the National STEM Video Game Challenge in Washington, DC. Before that spring, Angel had never designed a game of his own, and now here he was, an award winner in a national competition!…

Since the beginning of Toca Boca, we’ve always tried to invent new ways of playing with screens. Some come very naturally—like creative play—where the touchscreen device gives kids super powers for their creations. Other areas are a little more abstract and take some more thinking. In this more challenging category, we have Toca Builders, which addresses construction play. How can we use a flat 2D touchscreen to help kids create and play with models and patterns? From an adult’s perspective,…