Your Tax Dollars at Play

Interested in a job extending your EDTEC 670 skills with an almost unlimited budget? Here's your opportunity.

The Washington Times: CIA pursues video game:

"The CIA is set to spend several million dollars to develop a video game aimed at helping its analysts think like terrorists, The Washington Times has learned.

    The agency's Counter Terrorist Center, or CTC, is working with the Los Angeles-based Institute for Creative Technologies on a project designed to help its analysts, 'think outside the box,' a CIA spokesman said. The project is close to approval, but officials wouldn't comment on the exact cost of the program.

    The institute, part of the University of Southern California, works with Hollywood movie and video game specialists."

The Impact of Digital Games on Education

Here's a very interesting article on The Impact of Digital Games on Education. A very good review of the use and benefits of digital games, their general acceptance in educational settings and stimulating thoughts about future research. You'll find our elusive Prensky text referred to and quoted often. This article is from a peer-reviewed Internet journal titled First Monday . The content is all about the Internet!! Seems like a very informative site in general. I reached this site through another good site for games and simulations. It's called N A S A G A, the North American Simulation and Gaming Association. The home page has links to stimulating articles like the one above.

GameTheory.net

http://www.gametheory.net/

An interesting compendium of game design and information and samples. There are lecture notes from game design lectures, textbook reviews, interactive samples and strategy games, as well as a dictionary of gaming terms.

The site is the work of Mike Shor, an economics professor at Vanderbilt.

Gross Out

In search of fun and exciting games, I found a web site featuring a bunch of medical-related games, including "Gross Anatomy". The one thing I like about this game is that it's actually six games in one, and it appears to be very interactive. You can build a skeleton, challenge other players with blood and guts trivia and even go it solo and test yourself with a quiz. Check it out! They also have one called the "Infection Game" that's kind of like operation-perfect for medical students or hypocondriacs alike.

Telecollaborative Lessons as Simulations

On this website called "virtual-architecture", Judi Harris talked about using telecollaborative lessons as interpersonal exchange, information collection and analysis, and problem solving.

Under the last category, over 10 websites are provided as examples of using telecollaborative lessons as simulations. The projects listed cover a variety of topics, such as news coverage of a trial, election, electronic UN, and Federation Role-Playing Game, etc.

Click here to find out more exciting telecollaborative projects as instructional simulations!

Great article on games and simulation in education

This article, posted at PressI.com, highlights a technology and education workshop at a recent Higher Education Leaders Symposium held on the Microsoft campus. The workshop "examined the ways in which games and lifelike simulations can create virtual worlds that teach real-life lessons."

"Technology allows us to take approaches that have never before been feasible. As all of those things converge, perhaps it isn't surprising that many people are beginning to look at games and simulations as effective learning environments."

This topic must be hot if Microsoft is getting in on the action.

Be Your Own Mint

Hasbro has just released a PDF that replicates the artwork of Monopoly money. Click here and print yourself a fortune.

Technology for Education

I found some eGames on the web, go to: http://www.twitchspeed.com/site/news.html.

Although some of the technology used to develop the games was interesting and I did get a chuckle out of a couple of the games, it was easy to get ahead in some of the games without reading the questions. I started to question the educational value.

I did, however, find the game, Move-it, interesting. I got to play the Ethics version. The game had (1) well written instructions, (2) feedback for right and wrong answers, (3) a reference link available, (4) a link to concepts/facts. Try it out, I actually played a couple of rounds - believe it or not.

http://www.games2train.com/games/moveit/moveit.html

Ancient games

Here are a couple of sites that discuss ancient games. There are some good pictures at both sites, with rules and histories included. Most of the ancient games discussed appear to be race games, and they are still played in various forms today.

There is something appealing about the simple, straightforward quality of not only the games depicted at these sites, but the materials used to play them.

Games of Petra
Ancient Board Games and the Nabataeans
The Online Guide to Traditional Board Games

A new game genre?

Interesting article from BBC News about a PC game released this year called, Republic: The Revolution, based in part on the book, Crowds and Power, by Nobel Laureate Elias Canetti.

The game combines elements of real-time strategy and simulation which adds another level of believability for the player and basically creates a new genre, according to the game designer.

"...the sociological model in the game is as realistic as has been achieved so far".

"The game producer (Elixir) is talking to academics about how the artificial intelligence behind the game could be used for research purposes."

The game's fictitious country of Novistrana even has a website that extends the reality of the game to the internet.

Game links from Prensky

While trying another option to get the Prensky book, I got caught up in Marc Prensky's website. He has an entire section devoted to URL's and resources for game-based education, training, and e-learning. The first section is URL's for game companies for those interested. The second section are links to projects and products. The remaining sections are resources, both online and in print. At the very bottom is a small section of resource sites. This could be a great resource as we start to build our own games for this class and later. Also, a good resource for Comps...

New Report on "All Things" Simulation

Brandon Hall has just released a comprehensive report (725 pages) on simulation products and services. You can download the 26 page executive summary free of charge. Who should read it? "This report is sure to be a must have for instructional designers, e-learning professionals, product purchasers, SMEs, and anyone else interested in how simulations are changing the face of e-learning." The report profiles 54 simulation vendors, compares simulation authoring tools, and has information on emerging trends, e.g., "Over time, we are finding simulation products to be more dynamic, easier-to-use by novice developers, and making more efficient use of limited bandwidth resources."
simcover2004.jpeg

Food Chain Simulation

Students can simulate food chains and understand how they work with this simulation
of a virtual lake. Food Chain was developed by High Performance Systems as a by product of their Systems Thinking software iThink and Stella. The company newsletter The Connector (published bi-monthly) has regular articles about introducing and teaching Systems Thinking in schools. Systems Thinking is a fascinating subject that seems to offer many opportunities to stimulate new ways of thinking and to develop insights into how decisions and behavior creates changes for an entire system--a company, nation, family, school, or ecosystem.

Simulations and the Learning Revolution

Here's an interesting interview with Clark Aldrich, author of the forthcoming book Simulations and the Future of Learning:

"JM: What advice do you have for teachers who want to construct simulations for their on-campus or online classes?

CA: To understand simulations, the first thing to do is get comfortable playing computer games. Try The Sims, the newest Midtown Madness game, and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Then find an online community that builds modifications for existing games. For starters, try SimsFiles.com, X-Plane.org, or JediKnightII.net. After you have explored various options, choose a computer game that you like, and try implementing modifications that can be downloaded from community sites. This may sound complicated, but the communities are full of newcomers who also need step-by-step help."

Cool Industrial Waste Game Board for 8yr Olds

I was on a business trip and found an article advertising business games for kids. The one that caught my eye was an Industrial Waste board game. The players are the owners/managers of companies that are competing in this new world where profit, innovation, and environment must be balanced to be considered successful. Not only do players have to fatten the bottom line, they've got to temper their drive for profits with concern about pollution and other ecological damage. Careless players are slapped with government penalties.

Other games that were interesting were Bean Trader and Settlers of Catan.

Check it out: https://gamesurplus.com//detail.asp?id=2081

The Yoga Garden Game

While googling for game ideas, I came across this atypical one: The Yoga Garden Game.

It is aimed at children learning yoga, but rather than have the players compete against each other, the focus is on mutual growth and enjoyment. It is typical race game, but it's definitely "outside the box" in its emphasis on physical movement and creativity (children imagine the animals the poses are named for, and have the opportunity to create their own).

Workshops by Thiagi

We are going to talk about Sivasailam Thiagarajan and his games later in our class. He's an amazing person.
Check this out: Workshops by Thiagi
There are many "freebies" on this website.
My friend has told me that you are gonna love this guy. Are you? ;-)

Elliott Avedon Museum and Archive of Games Index Page

The University of Waterloo has been developing the Elliott Avedon Museum and Archive of Games Index Page since the very earliest days of the web. It contains a searchable collection of over 500 pages detailing games in the museum's collection. A good source of ideas.

Curriculum Mismatch as the Source of Boredom

In this month's issue of Educational Leadership there's an interesting article titled Boredom and Its Opposite.

"If, as research indicates and many teachers suspect, student achievement is more highly correlated with student interests than with cognitive ability, then we should make curriculum design based on human interests a primary focus for professional development during the next decade. It's time to make students and their natural human interests as important as the standards and tests that our states now mandate."

The authors boil it down to four sources of interest: mastery, understanding, interpersonal and self-expression. They point to an instrument that let's you see how individual learner profiles differ along these four dimensions and give a rubric for measuring a particular lesson or unit.

Not a bad article, though after going through the readings in this course I think you'll see that there are more than four dimensions. But four is a good start.