Posts on “ games based learning ”

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»

The Center for Game Science (CGS) is part of the department of computer science at the University of Washington. We’re made up of a group of designers, software engineers, artists, and students, including both PhD students and undergraduates in technical and educational fields. We have six games currently in development, and all of them targeted at different aspects of supporting measured and assessed learning through games. The Making of Treefrog Treasure: Our latest game is Treefrog Treasure. The game was designed to teach players how to place fractions on a numberline. The core group working on the game from the beginning included only 7-8 people, so we were really all involved in coming up with game design ideas. This means ideas were coming not only from game designers, but also artists, developers, and researchers in both Computer Science and Education. We went through a number of prototypes that were able to address our math goals but weren’t engaging enough for players. These prototypes included pinball-like games where players bounce/shoot a ball onto a numberline. Finally, we realized that a platformer game (think Super Mario Bros.™) where the character could stick to walls and jump into numberlines was the most engaging… Read the Rest»

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»