Tag Archives: stem

Allison Mishkin teaches at a game design camp for middle school students. Here she shares some of the lessons that she’s learned — and tries to impart — to her students during this week-long sessions.   A group of students stumble into a computer lab on a bright spring day, unsure why their parents wanted them out of the house on their vacations. By the end of the day, they would emerge optimistic and excited for the week to come.…

We’re thrilled to release the newest addition to the series of video case studies put out by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, in collaboration with and support from BrainPOP. In this video, Steve Isaacs, a Technology Instructor at William Annin Middle School in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, shares how he integrates video game design and development into his 7th grade curriculum.  Steve’s emphasis on the design process helps students develop essential 21st century skills, while sparking students’ interest and motivation through…

There may only be 2 days left to enter the National STEM Video Game Challenge but the STEM never stops. The Museum of Mathematics is offering a cash prize of $25,000 through the inaugural Rosenthal Prize for Innovation in Math Teaching.  The Prize is designed to recognize and promote hands-on math teaching in the upper elementary and middle school classroom. To learn more, visit rosenthalprize.momath.org.

Right now, here at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, we are all about STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. There are only two weeks left to enter the National STEM Video Game Challenge, which we are proud to present along with our partner E-Line Media. But we’re not the only STEM-centric show in town. February 23, as part of National Engineers Week, was ‘Introduce a Girl to Engineering’ day. US News and World Report has a section devoted to…

This post was originally published by Gamestar Mechanic Teacher Blog.  For full coverage of the National Stem Video Game Challenge, click here. Last week, I googled 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge and read through 15 full pages of search results where people and organizations shared their excitement for this year’s STEM competition. I also experienced this excitement first hand in Norfolk, VA the first weekend in February as I participated in NSU’s TechFest by giving workshops on game design 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.

According to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the typical American child — age 8 to 18 — spends no less than seven and a half hours a day engaged with media. According to research from Sesame Workshop and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, younger children are also consuming media heavily — about 4 hours a day for the typical five year old. Television, cell phones, computers, etc. are not just part of these children’s lives — in a very…

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…

A funny thing happened at a Capitol Hill Caucus Event in  D.C.  last month–a moment of bipartisan agreement!  The sighting of this rare bird seems well worth noting–everyone who has been following the debate over painful budget cuts has been wondering if and when consensus might ever break out. So I was delightfully surprised to be a part of a discussion of one issue that could, perhaps, be an important bridge across the political chasm: the role of digital technology–especially video games– to…

Today we bring you the first in a series of STEM related blog posts — starting with last year’s Cooney Center Prize finalists for the Motion Math — Gabriel Adauto and Jacob Klein. Throughout the process of creating Motion Math, our bouncing star fraction game for the iPhone and iPad, we’ve greatly benefited from conversations with our primary users: kids. The game was just released, and you can buy it here. We were honored this past June to be a…