Tag Archives: games

For the second year in a row, the iPad is the most popular item that children are asking for as a holiday gift.  Given that it is the season for making wish-lists, it is in this spirit that I offer my own iPad research wish-list for 2012. The items on this list will surely keep a variety of researchers busy in the new year and would help address some critical questions about the iPad in particular, but touch screens in…

This interview with Michael Levine originally appeared in Literacy 2.0 in August, 2011. It appears here with the permission of the author, Robert L. Lindstrom.   In 2007, the year the iPhone was introduced, the venerable children’s TV programmer Children’s Television Workshop (now named Sesame Workshop) spun off a nonprofit research and production institute intended to do for digital media what Sesame Street did for television, namely make the medium both educational and entertaining at the same time. The center…

I always love going to the Games, Learning and Society (GLS) conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Where else are you guaranteed access to a lakeside terrace, local microbrews, and warm Midwestern hospitality? In addition to these welcome amenities, GLS is also a place where games are taken quite seriously, albeit in a playful way. This year was no exception.   I attended the conference to present some of the early findings from my own research. With my collaborator LeAnne Wagner, I…

At Games for Change (G4C) last week, the audience was treated to a number of interesting discussions and keynotes surrounding current issues of video game play for learning and social change. Among the hot topics were of course the impending “Gamepocalypse” that will arguably come as a result of intense “Gamification,” but there was also measured discussion around how people are working to find out where “gamifying” is most helpful to learning and education, and plenty of evidence of exciting…

This year marks the ninth annual GLS Conference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The Games+Learning+Society Conference is known as a grass roots “indie” event where the people who create high-quality digital learning media can gather for a serious think about what is happening in the field and how the field can serve the public interest. The aim is to encourage in-depth conversation and social networking across diverse disciplines including game studies, education research, learning sciences, industry, government, educational practice, media design, and business.…

Today, The Electric Company will re-launch its third season with an all new transmedia story, “The Adventures of The Electric Company on Prankster Planet.”  Airing in a new segment at the end of the TV series and a new area of the website, this transmedia story engages and immerses participants in an experience through multiple forms of media, each element making a unique contribution to the story. Here, key members of the interdisciplinary team behind this new transmedia effort share…

This essay originally appeared in The Huffington Post. In a recent speech to a group of students at TechBoston in Dorchestor, Massachusetts. President Obama had this to say about video games: I’m calling for investments in educational technology that will help create … educational software that is as compelling as the best video game. I want you guys to be stuck on a video game that’s teaching you something other just blowing something up. When I started my career in…

Last week, our colleagues at Microsoft announced the full availability of the Kodu Game Lab for the PC and the launch of a nationwide Kodu Cup competition. The competition invites students, aged nine to 17 to design, build and submit their own video games. This post by Cooney Center Research Fellow Gabrielle Cayton-Hodges originally appeared on the Microsoft Unlimited Potential blog. There’s a growing body of evidence that both playing video games and making video games have promise as educational…

Last spring, my company Dreamkind won the first Cooney Center Prize for Breakthroughs in Literacy Learning. Thanks to the Cooney Center, Sesame Workshop and the Electric Company, there are lots of good things to report since we won the award. Most importantly, as a result of winning the contest, we were able to meet and collaborate with a bunch of really talented producers from The Electric Company. We proposed different ideas to them, exchanged concepts about developing educational gaming curricula…

The game that has knocked “Angry Birds Seasons” off its perch as the top free game in the iTunes store was designed by a self-taught 14-year-old programmer. According to ABC News, Robert Nay decided to design his own game after doing some research in the public library and downloading Corona, a software developer’s kit. With some help from his mother, the eighth grader spent a couple of hours each night over the course of a month designing “Bubble Ball,” a…