Posts on “ game design ”

Today marks day 4 of the week long marathon known as the Global Education Conference!  Here are some highlights from BrainPOP’s Games and Learning Strand. At 8:00AM, Join Danny Fain, STEM Teacher-in-Residence, Learning Games Network and Michael Suen, Community Producer, Learning Games Network for Collaborative Game Development Tools and Projects.  This session will explore how game design and production are emerging as an effective way to engage students across the curriculum. At 11:00 AM ET, tune into Prelude To Collaboration: A Global Learning Game in which Dr. Howard B. Esbin, PhD will present an overview of a powerful global learning game called Prelude. Prelude fosters self-knowledge, empathy, creativity, and collaboration. At 3:00 PM, Join Daria Ng and Joliz Cedeño , from Global Kids for a session called: Developing Global Citizenship Skills Through Game Design in which they will explore how serious games and game design can be used as a way to educate and engage youth about global issues and civic engagement, while enhancing their real-world problem solving skills. These 3 session are only a small sampling of the dozens planned for Thursday! Check out the rest of the schedule and get your PD on!

BrainPOP is thrilled to be a sponsor of one of the most innovative professional development conferences to hit the web!  The 3rd annual Global Education Conference is a free 5 day, 24/7, 300+ session extravaganza and it started yesterday.  With so much to navigate, this handy “conference guide” is a great entry point to the conference.  BrainPOP is specifically sponsoring all the conference sessions spotlighting Game Based Learning and Game Design in the context of Global Education. If you’ve been enjoying BrainPOP’s GameUp, check out some of the following sessions: Tuesday – (Time listed GMT-5, Eastern Time)  Bright and early at 8AM (if you’re on the east coast of the USA) you can join Learning Games Network director Alex Chisholm for an exploration of a killer game for ELL called Xenos Isle.  His session is called: Play Games-Learn English: Learning Games Network and Game-Based Language Learning Resources Later in the evening, join Dr Bronwyn Stuckey & Professor Sasha Barab present a special Keynote session  Next Generation Learning: Games and Global Community from 10-11PM On Wednesday at 8:00 AM learn about the joy of learning in a MOOC with Instructional Designer Kae Novak: Games MOOC: Where M stands for Modest and C stands for Community.  Tune… Read the Rest»

E-Line Media, the makers of Gamestar Mechanic, are looking for educators to help test out a new approach to preventing bullying, digital abuse and dating violence. The Real Robots of Robot High is a video game and curriculum that helps middle school students understand social systems as they play, remix and design video games. The Real Robots of Robot High brings the power of systems thinking to Social and Emotional Learning. Our goal is to help kids understand how social system components–like communication, influence and social power–work together. We believe this understanding prepares young people to deal critically with the social systems they encounter in the real world and to practice the positive behavioral strategies we would all like to see them adopt when dealing with challenges like bullying, dating violence and digital abuse. The Real Robots will be available everywhere on December 7th, 2012. But, you and your students can get it next week, for FREE by participating in the Real Robots Fall Beta Program! E-line Media is looking for 50 educators to try out the Real Robots video game and lesson plans in their classrooms between Monday October 15th and Friday, November 16th. All beta participants will receive free… Read the Rest»

Globaloria, established by the World Wide Workshop, is a program that teaches students how to create web-based educational games and interactive simulations.  Each year, the program hosts the Globeys, a game design competition in which hundreds of Globaloria students participate.  Celebrating excellence in the game design process, the Globeys are launched in the fall, giving students most of the school year to work on their projects before the spring submission deadline. On August 10th, Globaloria proudly announced the names of the following West Virginia STEM and Civics Globey winners, as well as the Educator Inspiration Award winners. WV STEM Globey Winner: Power Supply, by Dylan Sturgeon WV Civics Globey Winners: Cause and Effect the Daniel Calwell, Story, by Caitlin Moore & Austin Susman Globaloria Educator Award Winners: Nyssa Arcos Evans (Best Returning Educator) and Diane White (Best Educator Mentor) These winners were recognized for their hard work and creativity at the special Globey Award ceremony in Charleston, WV and received certificates, awards, and prizes, including subscriptions to BrainPOP.  Congratulations!  

This Wednesday at 6:30 PM ET, we welcome back to our webinar series BrainPOP educator extrodinaire Adam Coccari.  Not only is Adam working with his students to prepare games for the National STEM challenge, but he is an award nominated game designer himself, recently releasing Math Evolve for the iOS platform.  This innovative app is a fun and engaging game for practicing basic math facts.  Your can download free version of Math Evolve here. Adam is a dynamic educator, doing innovative things with his students, so be sure to register for the webinar and tune in for an engaging conversation.    

Join us for Wednesday’s webinar at 4:30PM ET. At BrainPOP we’re committed to providing high quality games not only through GameUp but by supporting game design projects in multiple education settings. To that end, we welcome Shannon Sullivan, Vice President of World Wide Workshop, for this special webinar on the Workshop’s Globaloria game design curriculum and social network for learning. She’ll explain how it’s inspiring innovation and learning among thousands of students across the country.  

Wednesday, December 14th 4:30 PM EDT Duration: 1 Hour From BrainPOP Educators to ed tech conferences everywhere, you’ve heard the buzz about games in the classroom. Now, take a look at the roots of those games. What’s the development process like? What key ingredients ensure their success? Would you and your students make good game beta-testers? Allisyn Levy and the team from BrainPOP partner Filament Games host.  

Attention New York City area educators! Are you ‘game’ for a free one day game design workshop with BrainPOP and Gamestar Mechanic? Then read on. . . From the National STEM Video Game Challenge to ed tech conferences around the country, you’ve heard the buzz about student-made games. But how do you get started making that a reality in your classroom? On Saturday, November 12, join leading game designers, STEM content experts, and fellow educators for a day of professional development dedicated exclusively to this rapidly growing field of game design. Keynote speaker Michael Angst, Founder and CEO of educational game publisher E-Line Media, kicks things off with a talk that illuminates the key elements of game design. Then, head to hands-on workshops in which you’ll use curricular content from BrainPOP and the easy-to-use game design tool Gamestar Mechanic to develop your very own game. You’ll leave armed with great ideas and ready to tackle that National STEM Video Game Challenge with your students. Breakfast, lunch, and other goodies will be provided. When: Saturday, November 12 (National Gaming Day!) 9:30am – 4:00pm Where: BrainPOP HQ Sorry, registration is now closed, we are full.

Perhaps the coolest camp ever, I recently had the opportunity to visit Learning Games Network’s summer program, Design Corps Boot Camp, at MIT. The camp offers middle school teachers and students the opportunity to work with professionals in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and more. It’s a bit late for this year, but definitely something to keep an eye out for next summer. Are you using game design with your students? How? We’d love to hear about it!  

I learned about an an innovative program that is engaging young people in Flash game design at the Games 4 Change conference in NY. We are very interested in this space because BrainPOP has launched a new initiative to showcase educational games, learning games and student made games called GameUp. I found this program particularly interesting because Flash is the program BrainPOP.com uses to create their educational animations. I was very impressed by a presentation given by Otis Robinson a teacher in Brooklyn who is teaching students to use Flash in his classroom. Flash is a very powerful tool and a very sought after skill in the 21st Century workplace so I was psyched to learn about Globaloria, the program that he was representing.  I was able to speak to Otis after the program and was blown away by the great things he is doing with game design in his urban classroom.  The Gateway School services an urban community where almost one third of the population lives below the poverty line and over seventy percent are minorities. Globaloria-NY is in its first pilot year with eighth grade students at I.S. 364-Gateway Intermediate School and it has been very successful in engaging students in compelling project-based learning to… Read the Rest»