Posts on “ games ”

If you joined us for either of our recent Play Seriously: The MIT Education Arcade webinars, you already know a bit about The Labyrinth Challenge.  For those of you who may have missed the webinars or need a little refresher, we want to take a moment to share the details of this exciting opportunity. It’s a national math challenge for middle school students, centering on the educational game Lure of the Labyrinth. Teachers, coaches, and youth leaders, enroll teams of your students for free through June 15th.   You know that it’s not always easy to engage middle schoolers. But couching key lessons in game play is a great way to reach them: advancing from one level to another in “Lure of the Labyrinth” requires students to apply their understanding of various mathematical concepts. Plus, the game meets Common Core standards and allows teachers to assess student understanding through the game’s built-in assessment tools. With data and reports that are automatically generated through game play, teachers can document student progress and guide math instruction in the classroom.   Head on over to our very own GameUp for a sampling of some Lure of the Labyrinth puzzles.  Students and educators who… Read the Rest»

If you’ve heard about BrainPOP’s collection of free online games but haven’t had a chance to check it out, here’s an easy way to see what GameUp has to offer! In this screencast, we take you on a brief tour of GameUp, highlighting a fantastic iCivics game called Branches of Power. Watch as we show you how our games can be the perfect extension for BrainPOP movie topics so that students can explore the concepts they’ve learned in meaningful, real-world contexts: The Branches of Power game is part of a collection of free iCivics social studies games on GameUp: we also offer Law Craft, Argument Wars, Court Quest, Supreme Decision and Executive Command. You can also search GameUp by subject area and find social studies, math, science, and health games. Have you used GameUp in your classroom? Share your experiences in the comments!

Are you a fan of GameUp? Do you love the BrainPOP Featured Movie App? Well then, we’ve got exciting news.  Our friends at Filament Games and iCivics have introduced the newest version of their most popular game: Pocket Law Firm for iOS. Win this game by taking on cases, matching advocates with clients and working hard for justice! You may have played this on the desktop before, but now you can take it with you!  Check it out and let us know what you think!

Let’s hear it for our very own Kari Stubbs, who was recognized as one of Daily Edventures’ global heroes in education!  Daily Edventures is an education-focused blog that has a central goal for 2012: to identify 365 inspiring advocates for education.  Kari was interviewed by the site’s editor, Anthony Salcito, who is also vice president of education for Microsoft Corp.’s Worldwide Public Sector organization.  In her interview, Kari reflects on her experiences as a classroom teacher and shares her expertise on game-based learning and its growing popularity in schools.  She explains the driving force behind our GameUp feature  while sharing the many resources we have to support it. Want to hear more from Kari about educational gaming?  Check out her keynote address from the 2011 Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum.  With her wealth of knowledge on education and game-based learning, it’s easy to see why Kari has been recognized as a global ed hero.  She sure is one of ours!

Can YOU learn how a cell cycle works by playing a GAME? That’s the challenge Sarah Jean-Daum gave her students – 7th-graders at NYC’s Cathedral School – earlier this month. The game in question? Control of the Cell Cycle, available on GameUp. On December 6th, we had the privilege of visiting the class to see how they were doing with said challenge. Students had about 20 minutes to play Control of the Cycle individually on laptops.  They were fully engrossed as we observed them asking each other questions, taking notes, sharing tips, and checking in with their teacher. When the 20 minutes were up, Sarah took some time to debrief. She asked the class questions about their game playing technique, leading them to collaborate at the whiteboard on an explanation of what they’d done. Most of the students commented that note-taking, as Sarah had suggested, proved helpful as they played. Sarah then had students reenter the game and walk her through the steps they’d taken.  She prompted them to  label each phase and asked them if they’d noticed the visual aids embedded in the game. What happened in Gap 1? What happened in Synthesis? The lesson wrapped up with BrainPOP’s Mitosis movie and its… Read the Rest»

Students, teachers, gamers young and old are loving Food Fight, GameUP’s newest offering that explores ecosystems and food chains! We were thrilled to receive this feedback from Ray Hopkin, a 7th grade Literacy, Numeracy, Science and History-Geography teacher from Bliss Carmen Senior Public School in Ontario, Canada, courtesy of betaclassroom.org. For more ideas about using Food Fight at school, or to share some of your own, take a look in our discussion forum! This is an amazing program where kids get to have a bit of a food fight! Two players pick an animal and they have to create a food web in order for their animal to survive. They can play defensively, by making sure they have enough food for themselves, or they can play more attack minded, by bringing more predators against their opponents, but they have to be very careful. I have had my grade 7 science classes play this and EVERY student loved it! To hear the amount of strategic planning going on is amazing, and the amount of laughter is great. If I was to suggest one thing, and that is the ability for on-line play, as opposed to two players sharing one computer, as… Read the Rest»

Have you heard about Scratch? Well if you like BrainPOP, you’ll love Scratch. Scratch is a unique, free programming tool that can be used for game design, storytelling, animation and all sorts of multimedia projects. Based on the constructionist (not to be confused with construtivist) theories of Seymour Papert from the MIT media lab, Scratch is like recess that encourages kids to play and create in virtual space.  Interestingly, Scratch incorporates a social aspect by encouraging programmers to upload  projects to the online community where they can play, comment, download and remix projects by other users.  Currently the community hosts over 2,000,000 projects, thats a lot of remixing!  Here is an interview with Mitch Resnick, Professor of learning at the MIT media lab, talking about tinkering, making and remixing with Scratch. Attention Tri-state area teachers: This weekend, NYC Scratch Day is happening at Packer School in Brooklyn. Kids, teachers, parents and Scratch fanatics from all around will come together to share, learn and program together.  If you register, look out for BrainPOP’s own Allisyn Levy.  Reach out and say hello!  

EdWeb: Games Created Social Learning Opportunities for Students Tuesday, October 25 4:00 PM EDT Duration: 1 Hour Do you think students learn through observing the behaviors and activities of others? Do you believe that peer support can lead to increased learning outcomes? In our next webinar, Snehal Patel, CEO of Sokikom, will explore how the growth and availability of the Internet over the past decade has allowed learning to become a lot more social. Patel will also share how two of today’s educational games—Xenos and Sokikom— leverage this social layer in ways that enhance and improve learning with students working collaboratively to achieve objectives. Join Snehal Patel for an interactive, one-hour webinar on Tuesday, October 25 for a look at how social learning games allow students to learn from one another.

Beth Quinn is Research Director at Filament Games. Prior to joining Filament’s team, Dr. Quinn was a professor of sociology, specializing in the Sociology of Law and qualitative methods. She brings almost two decades of teaching experience and a passionfor innovative approaches to teaching and research to her work at Filament. Dr. Quinn received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of California-Irvine.  Today, as BrainPOP announces our STEM game design event,  Dr. Quinn asks for your guidance on future offerings from Filament Games. What topic plagues you year after year? The topic that students consistently have trouble understanding, find excruciatingly boring, or simply can’t relate to. You try different methods, but every year it’s the same old struggle. You can’t drop it because it’s foundational to the field or it’s mandated by state standards. Anyone who has ever taught knows these frustrations. I like to call them “Pedagogical Pain Points.”   I work with a talented team at Filament to create educational video games that help teachers turn Pedagogical Pain Points into Pedagogical Victories. Filament Games is working to develop games that function as core teaching tools for topics that are foundational to your field or are consistently difficult for your… Read the Rest»

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.