Tag Archives: games

One of the most exciting things about receiving a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the opportunites the foundation provides to connect and collaborate with other organizations.  Last week, Michael Levine and I had the chance to attend the Gates Foundation’s annual convening of organizations working on Teacher Effectiveness.  The groups who attended and presented at this meeting, including The Center for Teaching Quality, VIVA Teachers, Educators 4 Excellence, Purpose, Student Achievement Partners, The Hope Street Group…

The annual Kids@Play Summit for industry professionals in related fields will meet at the Consumer Electronics Show this January at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The summit will include three exhibit days as well as a conference on January 9, 2013, which features several experts in the field of digital media for children and topics such as the transformation of play, interactive media use, learning, and communication in a digital age. Speakers include the keynote speaker, Nolan Bushnell (Founder of…

Congratulations to Dan Caldwell, one of our 2011 National STEM Challenge Video Game winners. His app, Body Adventure with Captain Brainy-Pants! is now available in the iTunes App Store. The app includes six games that explore the systems of the human body and features original music composed by Dan himself   Body Adventure with Captain Brain-Pants is now available for iPad, Android, Kindle, and Nook. Watch the trailer below, and check out the game in the App Store.    

When I wrote the first iLearn report in 2009, mainstream news and industry sources were just starting to document the trend of kids and apps, and there was a significant amount of skepticism around whether apps would play an important role in the children’s media landscape.  The original report addressed this doubt by answering the question of whether apps were becoming a significant part of the children’s media landscape.  What we discovered was a resounding yes. It may sound crazy…

They say that every summer has a story, and now at the end of my experience teaching for the Gamestar Mechanic Online Learning Program, it’s time for my students’ stories to come to an end. But it’s wonderful to realize that for many of them getting more interested and involved with game design, this is just the beginning. As we wrapped up the program last week, my inbox was filled with an exciting flurry of final assignments, last chances to…

Much of what we hear when people talk about games for learning may be behind the potential of video games to teach traditional content, but there’s also a very exciting, and increasingly popular trend in education of kids as game designers. But what do we really mean when we say kids as designers? What skills and perspectives are kids getting by engaging in the game design process? As Aaron Morris recently discussed on the Cooney Center blog, an essential part of “21st Century Skills”…

What makers of technology for early education can learn from Sesame Street. Whether you’re at a restaurant or on an airplane, you can’t miss changes in adult-child interactions from just a generation ago. Everyone is plugged in. It seems almost quaint to see kids and adults engaged together in screen-free play. Four-year-olds now consume three hours of media per day, and fourth graders more than five hours. And it is not just youth—adults are also increasingly finding it difficult to turn off…

As a graduate student studying games for learning, and a general geek extraordinaire, I’ve been given the unique opportunity this summer to teach a new online program for kids who want to learn how to design video games. E-Line Media, a Cooney Center partner in the National STEM Video Game Challenge, and the creator of the game-building platform Gamestar Mechanic, has designed an engaging curriculum that teaches kids not only how to make their own games, but also what it is that game…

Games for Change, the leading advocate for supporting and making games for social impact, is celebrating the organization’s new found global reach at this year’s 9th Annual Games for Change Festival at the NYU Skirball Center June 20-22. Use promo code “cooney” to save 10% off the registration fee. http://www.gamesforchange.org/

This year’s Serious Play Conference speakers include leading thinkers, consultants, authors and analysts in the serious games industry as well as project directors already creating sims and games for education, corporate and military training, healthcare and non profits. Highlights for this year include new research on the market and growth trends for the serious games industry and presentations of the latest measurement and assessment strategies. Refinansiering: Hvilke vilkår innebærer det?