Posts on “ cooney center ”

We’re thrilled to release the newest addition to the series of video case studies put out with our partners at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. 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 the use of a medium they are passionate about. Using game design programs such as Gamestar Mechanic and Gamemaker enable this teacher to embed essential programming skills into a unit of study that also has an authentic purpose — his students are creating games to enter in the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge! The winners of this exciting competition will be announced at The Atlantic’s Technologies and Education Forum on Tuesday, May 22, 2012.  You can read more about how Steve Isaacs prepared his students to enter their original video games in the National STEM Video Game Challenge here. We’re super-proud of this BrainPOP Educator! Read more about his work. Or, read the study itself, including a survey of more than 500 K-8 teachers who document their… Read the Rest»

We’ve made some interesting additions to our research page on BrainPOP Educators. BrainPOP teamed up with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop to lead a research project, Teacher Attitudes about Digital Games in the Classroom. 500 teachers nationally were surveyed for the study. Over 60 percent of educators surveyed feel that games helped increase engagement with subject-area content among lower-performing students. 62 percent report that games make it easier for them to level lessons and effectively teach the range of learners in their classrooms. Get the facts and read the full results of the study. Want to learn more? We’ve posted some amazing interviews with the teachers involved in the case studies for this research project.  Hear them talk about their experiences with game based learning as they give you a firsthand look at their students’ engagement in the classroom.  You’ll leave feeling inspired and ready to try out gaming with your own students!

What Do Teachers Really Think About Gaming in Education? A few months ago, BrainPOP teamed up with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and embarked on a research project to dig deep into that very question. In the next few days, we’ll be releasing that data, but we wanted to give you a sneak peek behind the scenes of Teacher Attitudes about Digital Games in the Classroom. The entire process has been a fantastic learning opportunity for us and will help shape the direction we move with GameUp.   My partner in crime, Jessica Millstone, Research Consultant at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and I were fortunate to visit the classrooms of many talented teachers for the first part of the study. Through video interviews and classroom observations, we captured these teachers different perspectives and approaches to integrating online games in these classrooms.   For the second part of the study, we surveyed 500 teachers nationally. We weren’t surprised to learn that over 60 percent of educators surveyed feel that games helped increase engagement with subject-area content among lower-performing students. We did, however, learn that 62 percent report that games make it easier for them to level lessons and effectively teach the range… Read the Rest»