Posts on “ gaming ”

Guest Blogger Andrew K. Miller (@betamiller on Twitter) is on the National Faculty for the Buck Institute for Education, an organization specializing in 21st century project-based learning, as well as for ASCD, providing expertise in a variety of professional development needs. He is also a regular blogger for Edutopia. In this guest blog post, Andrew distills the game evaluation process into 3 key points. BrainPOP uses these and other evaulation points when determining games to present on GameUp. I love using games in the classroom, and I love supporting teachers in their implementation. As I continue this work, both in terms of advocacy and implementation, there remains a critical question that will either support games for learning, or undermine it. Is it a good game? I constantly watch the twittersphere and get emails from colleagues, game companies, and the like about “games.” Whether it’s “20 Games to Support ELL Students,” or “The 5 New Best Games for the iPad,” it can be daunting to even know where to start using games in the classroom. I’ve got news for you. What people claim to be games, may in fact not be games at all. Or, even worse, they may bad games!… Read the Rest»

On February 13th, BrainPOP was thrilled to host student leaders from Global Kids and Mouse Squad for a “serious game jam” at BrainPOP Headquarters.  During the 2 hour event, student leaders from Global Kids led a “grow a game” activity that encouraging their peers to consider the role of values in the games they know and love.  Next, in small groups, students playtested and manipulated “Buckets” a new categorization and relationship assessment game that we’re developing here at BrainPOP. The student input was phenomenal, they provided all sorts of creative ideas for how to change the mechanics, data and interface to make the game more fun, effective and useful for the classroom. At BrainPOP we host events like this for a number of reasons.  First of all it’s wonderful to provide opportunity for students to learn about the process of game design from professionals in the field.  Second it’s great for our designers at BrianPOP to get authentic feedback and suggestions directly from the most important members of our audience: students! You can’t build a successful game without concrete feedback from your audience.   Finally, it’s through events like this that connect students, teachers, parents, and professionals with shared interests… Read the Rest»

Register for the next edWeb Game-Based Learning webinar entitled, ”WoW in School: Video Games as Arenas for Quest-Based Learning“ on  Tues, Feb 19 at 5pm (EST).  Are you trying to close the rift between traditional classroom practice and the hyper “click, tap and swipe” learning innate in your students? Even once we grasp the inherent value in these tools, it can be difficult to find connections to the curriculum, classroom management advice, and examples of what the learning looks like. Join edWeb.net on February 19th when Laurence Cocco interviews Peggy Sheehy about using WoW in School as an arena for quest-based learning. Peggy will tell us about her journey with Lucas Gillispie of Pender County Schools hosting a hybrid, collaborative literacy program using World of Warcraft to engage youth in learning. After one year as an after-school program, their WoW in School project was refined, aligned to national core standards for English language arts (ELA), and introduced into the regular academic day. We’ll hear the steps taken to bring massively multiplayer online games into the classroom and how the “hidden curriculum” in games has provided opportunities for students to master real world skills that often elude traditional leaning environments. Peggy and Laurence also will provide practical ideas for leveraging the unique properties of video games for your teaching… Read the Rest»

Inspired by the Educate to Innovate Campaign, President Obama’s initiative to promote a renewed focus on STEM education, the National STEM Video Game Challenge is a multi-year competition whose goal is to motivate interest in STEM learning among America’s youth by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games. CALLING ALL TEACHERS with STUDENT GAMERS!  ENCOURAGE your students to ENTER THE CHALLENGE! BrainPOP is once again a proud outreach partner for the challenge and our site is a terrific starting place for you to prepare your students to participate.  Use our STEM Spotlight to introduce key concepts that might inspire your students as entry points for developing game content. In addition, check out GameUp for examples of STEM-based educational games and begin thinking about turning content knowledge into games.  We’ve got lesson plans to help get you up and running, or listen to a webinar and read our blog posts that can help you consider the best ways to bring game design into your classroom.    

Just this week, we’ve quietly rolled out a new group of support pages on BrainPOP Educators.  We have created game specific  pages to help support your implementation of GameUp games in class! Every GameUp page has a lesson ideas button. Click the button to find lesson plans, graphic organizers, videos and implementation strategies all geared toward the specific game. With unique pages for each of the almost 60 games on GameUp, you’ll find the most useful implementation content to help you begin  incorporating game based learning into your teaching! Over the last year, our goal has been to make a more friendly BrainPOP Educators experience, and reduce the amount of searching you need to do to find the resource that you want.   We hope you find these new pages useful!  We’re always eager for feedback so please leave your ideas or suggestions in the comments section below.  

GameUp keeps growing!  Just this week, we’ve introduced 5 new games, including our first music game, from partner State of Play, called One Man Band. All you do is drag and drop instruments anywhere on the screen to build a crazy contraption and create your own tune.  From partner Hooda Math we welcome another instant classic, Ice Cream Truck! This game provides an opportunity to unleash your inner entrepreneur and exercise your budget skills as you buy materials and price your ice cream cones accordingly.  Build-a-Body and Build-A-Tree are excellent interactive simulations from game partner Spongelab. Whether you are a surgeon transplanting inner organs, or a arborist designing a maple tree to survive in different seasons, these simulations put you into the shoes of knowledgeable professional!  What Plants Need, also from Spongelab, explores the combination of light, water and air that plants need to survive. We are thrilled to continue building game offerings on GameUp. Keep checking our blog and be the first to hear news about games and developments at BrainPOP!

Heading to FETC in Orlando this week?  Our very own Dr. Kari Stubbs has collaborated with a superstar team to present #Edgames #Edlearning #EdAssessment.  She’ll be joining Brian Alspach (E-Line Media), Scot Osterweil (MIT), Naomi Greenfield (Fablevision), and Betsy Peisach (Maryland Public Television) to discuss the hot topic of games in learning and how it’s becoming more than a trend.  This panel of experts will be exploring games as consumption, creation, their intersection with digital content, research, challenges, and the critical dimension of professional development and teacher support.  New to games in the classroom?  No problem!  Attendees will leave the session with a collection of educational games and teaching resources so you can get started as soon as you return to your classroom. Don’t miss this exciting session on Wednesday, January 30 from 10-11 am in room South 320H of the convention hall. We’re everywhere this week! In addition to FETC, we’re exhibiting at BETT in London. Read what the BrainPOP UK team has in store for the show and follow @BrainPOP_UK for the latest overseas news.

Doug Bergman is a teacher at Porter-Gaud School in Charleston, South Carolina. He’s been teaching for almost 20 years, the majority of that in Computer Science. Since my first day of teaching, I’ve led hands-on, project-based classes simply because it made sense. The best way to describe my classes would be “structured, but chaotic with a side order of energy”. I got my B.S. from Clemson University & M.A. from University of South Carolina. I bring a unique perspective to education as I am a product of 12 years in the public school world, but have spent the last 20 years in the independent school world, plus a few years in industry. I’ve attended school as a student while living in France and I’ve taught school while living in Japan, so I’ve experienced education in a wide variety of ways. Additionally, I’ve traveled extensively in over 23 countries. Students in one of our computer science classes have perhaps the coolest homework assignment EVER! They are required to find and play games on BrainPOP . They actually have to analyze them in more than 25 dimensions. Why? To find out the elements of what makes a good game, especially educational games…. Read the Rest»

This Thursday, January 10 at 4pm ET,  join our friends at EdWeb for a compelling webinar. Presenters: Victoria Van Voorhis, Founder & CEO, Second Avenue Software, and  Jayne C. Lammers, Assistant Professor, University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education. How do girls’ preferences in computer games vary from those of boys? Girls value the opportunity to collaborate with others in solving problems in non-violent, non-competitive contexts. These factors should be considered when designing or evaluating games for the classroom. Join Victoria Van Voorhis and Jayne C. Lammers for our community’s new webinar to learn how to incorporate games into your curriculum to engage all of your students. Join these two experts who have studied girls and gaming from diverse perspectives for the insight you need to make smart choices about games for learning. REGISTER HERE for the webinar

Boston Area Teachers! Friday, 11 January 2013, 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. EST Join local learning game designers, educational researchers, and fellow teachers for an intimate one-day professional development workshop designed to help make game design a reality in your classroom. Organized by BrainPOP, Learning Games Network, and the MIT Education Arcade, the day will focus on new ways we can all make learning playful for our students. Learning game designers, researchers, and educators will lead sessions on how you can more effectively integrate BrainPOP’s GameUp resources into your classroom teaching and introduce the Learning Games Network’s Game Design Tool Kit as a way to engage students in conceptual game design. In the afternoon, you’ll be the first to play a handful of new games, produced earlier in the the week by teams of designers and programmers from MIT, BrainPOP, Learning Games Network, and Emerson College’s Engagement Lab; these new games are being produced to help us better assess and understand student learning through games! We’re looking for Boston-area teachers to join us for this exciting and productive professional development program. Each participant will leave with a sense that… Game-based learning is doable! It’s educational! Teachers can shape the direction of games being… Read the Rest»