Mothers Against Videogames and Violence

Catchy name for an organization, no? It turns out that MAVAV is a hoax created as a class project. What a marvelous tool the web is!

It's Getting too Easy to Buy Games

I just purchased this Ebay Auction Game from Amazon. I'll add it to the pile of games we play next fall in the early weeks of the course. While there, I noticed a slew of educational and board
games that Amazon is selling for Toys 'R Us.

What makes it interesting is the Amazonian inclusion of reviews by other buyers. Some of them are brutal, and very similar to what we've noticed in a lot of the commercial games we play in class: rules too complicated and gimmicky, too hard to set up, too many pieces, etc. So many ways to do it badly! Some interesting games to buy, too. Amazon is even more dangerous than Ebay.

Want to Run Your Own Country?

Try Jennifer Government: NationStates, a free web-based simulation based on a recent book. Looks interesting and the price is right.

Hangman

I'm on a listserv ( ITFORUM@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU ) for 791A, but Mary Haskett of HCI Training posted a cool Flash-based Hangman game that is appropriate for this class. Mary describes it as a "web-based learning activity using Flash (it's a Hangman game) that can be personalized for use in any project. You can specify the number of questions to be asked and if you include more than the minimum, the program will randomly select questions from the questionpool. The questions and instructions can be revised by editing a text file. We're sending it out to our clients but I thought everyone at ITFORUM might have fun with it as well. Feel free to use it if you wish."

http://www.hcitraining.com/gift

Happy Holidays!

Invisible Actors

Contests are within the domain of EdGames, so you might be interested in Invisibles, a weekly competition in which you have to identify the movies that eight still pictures were taken from. The catch is that any exposed body parts of the actors have been carefully Photoshopped away into the cornfield. It amazes me that with no clues but the backgrounds and costumes, there are people who get all 8 correct every week. I guess I need to get out more.

Old News

Attention young whippersnappers! If you want to develop greater empathy with people in their 70s, or get a sneak preview of your own future body, then it's time to climb into the age simulator suit. Not only will you experience stiffness, diminished energy, sight and hearing, but soon you'll be leaving your turn signals blinking for miles and rushing to Denny's for the Early Bird Special.

More here and here, auf Deutsch.

After School Physical Education Activities

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ASPA is a FREE resources site for after school progam instructors,school teachers, parents and everyone else looking for some fun games for kids. It incorporates instructions with video and audio to further explain the games. Its very useful.

Playful Spreadsheets

Who would have imagined? You can create games within Excel, as can be seen here, a list of successful entries in a challenge posed by Mr. Excel himself. Maybe I should add this to the list of project possibilities for next year's class.

Virtual Reality and Panic Disorder

The Virtual Reality Medical Center in San Diego, CA offers virtual reality simulations to clients suffering from phobias. In the safety of a medical office, the client can experience and work through their fears. Therapists expose clients to increasing levels of anxiety-provoking stimuli until a satisfactory tolerance is developed. VRMC offers programs for individuals with fear of heights, driving, and public speaking, among others.

What is Nanotechnology?

Go to TechTV to download cool nanotechnology simulations.

Dave Roos of Tech TV states, "Nanotechnology is science on an incredibly small scale. A nanometer, by definition, is one-billionth of a meter. To give you some perspective, an object that is 10 nanometers wide is still 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a single human hair.

Nanotechnology is the creation of functional devices and materials with a length no greater than 100 nanometers. In essence, the goal of nanotechnology is to build microscopic machines with molecular gears that perform useful, real-world tasks. Download these computer simulations of nanogears in action, courtesy of NASA. The teeth of each gear are single benzyne molecules."

Puzzle Game Introspections

It's always interesting to read the reflections of game designers about how the process went. IDevGames just published a short Black Cube Postmortem that's worth a look.

"As strange as it sounds, the lack of time I had each day to work on Black Cube wasn't always a bad thing. Rather than jumping in and coding each day, I was forced to think about what I was going to do. During my driving commute to work each day I would mentally design changes to the code, and sometimes I'd realize that my first approach wasn't going to work even before I'd written anything."

Video Games Reduce Improve Health?

NASA has created a unique interactive system that uses biofeedback to help control stress and tension in patients. They have started employing this technique through the use of video games. The joystick encourages certain brainwave responses that stimulate a reduction of stress. Children with ADHD are receiving video game treatment because it has a motivational edge over traditional brainwave biofeedback treatment.

Learning with Leapfrog

This has been voted the HOT Holiday Toy for 2002! And rightly so. Leapfrog is a superb learning
game to support an array of content from reading to math and more that is learned in school.
The games pride themselves in being standard-based and students can even download "homework"
practice published by the teacher at school to upload into their "quantum learning pad system" to
practice useful skills learned in school. As a teacher, I highly recommend this as your holiday purchase!

Games That Teach Living

The Franklin Learning Systems site presents an array of very interesting games. Many of the games are aimed at social problems in schools. Games like Block the Bully Cycle and Conflict Resolution are aimed at both high school and adult audiences. There are also a few aimed at getting a job, teamwork and succeeding at a job. The descriptions are somewhat limited and there is no way to see how the games are actually played, but I think it’s important that we are aware of the existence of such games for possible later use. This section looks at high school and adult games, but there are also elementary and middle school level subjects available.

World Wildlife Federation

The WWF is the organization that forced the World Wrestling Federation to change it’s name. It has a wonderful site devoted to informing and teaching conservation in many ways. There is a group of games aimed at a wide age range to teach many aspects of conservation. One of my favorites is called Caught in the Act!

This a game that follows the trails of illegal poachers and their markets. The game brings an awareness of the trade in illegal animals and animal products and the toll on endangered animal populations. There are other games teaching bio-diversity and many forms. Play Caught in the Act!

Fun Brain

Have Fun Challenging your Brain!




FunBrain.com is a site filled with all kinds of resources for educators. While it specializes in K-8, there are many games for high school and beyond. There is a quiz game to identify famous mathematicians and scientists. And a game called Fredo’s Super Challenge that presents various scientific and math problems in order to escape from a black hole. In addition to the games, there are sections for teachers and parents as well as an online quiz builder for teachers. Check out some of the games

Literacy Center

The Literacy Center is a great place where preschool and primary grade students can go online and practice letters, shapes, reading and writing skills. What's great about this site is that all the the activities are not only in English, but Spanish, German, and French as well. The best part about this the Literacy Center is that it is FREE.

The U-Mich Reform

I'm addicted to BLOGGING I guess. My obligatory five are finished but I just ran into a great site that you just have to see. I was looking for specific guidelines on questioning techniques in the classroom for our instructor course at work, and this site has that and much more. It is the University of Michigan's Introductory Mathematics Program. I really enjoyed the "lecture" information - they talk about doing 15-minute bursts of lecture interspersed with cooperative learning activities. They even talked about the importance of knowing student names and had the tip of taking a photo of the students on the first day. Did Bernie already see this website?!? Check it out

Are only Men Blogging Regularly?

Ok, it's not about games or simulations...but it's about BLOGS. Here’s an interesting article about a women’s experience breaking into the blog world. Are there more men than women blogging? Apparently not – the ratio is about 50-50. It’s just that they’re harder to find. The article Telling All Online: It's a Man's World (Isn't It?) says “Web experts assign some blame to the mainstream media, which has focused its attention on a predominantly male group of bloggers who write about terrorism and Iraq and have come to be known as the warbloggers.” But female bloggers are finding their way onto blog lists now. And apparently, each gender is influencing how the other writes.

Can you Deal with Being Disoriented?

How do you "point and click" when the mouse does not behave in the usual fashion? Do you adapt more quickly to having the left-right or up-down directions reversed? Try a simulation called Reverse the Field to see what it’s like. (I was better at left-right, myself). Explore Science has more simulations geared towards 9-12th graders (or curious adults). Here’s another… Black Hole. Try getting ore buckets from your ore cannon to the stations that are surrounded by black holes. Good luck on that one! Sometimes "simulations" are worth a thousand words..

Junkbot

"Test your LEGO building skills to the limit! In Junkbot, you have to build bridges, stairs, and walls out of LEGO bricks to help a garbage-loving robot collect all the trash in the factory."
I can't get anything important done these days because of Junkbot. I've got circles under my eyes from staying up til 2am to try to reach the "next level". Forget about family, friends, homework, eating.... this game is truly consuming my life. It's entertaining and involves both logic and strategy. The goal is to use "virtual legos" to build a path for the Junkbot to reach garbage cans. He can only climb one Lego high at a time, so building steps is a big part of this game. There are a lot of scenarios, each with a gold medal award if you can meet or beat the suggested number of moves to build the structure.

Quia Games are Cool!

In EDTEC 791A your get to know Quia (pronounced key-ah) and short for Quintessential Instructional Archive. You will use it to create survey, and the professor uses it to deliver that 10 page "quiz" in the middle of the semester.
Ouia is for more than survey. Quia can be used to construct educational games, and they also have a bunch of games already developed that you can just go and play (no sign-in necessary). I went there tonight to play Hangman -- US Presidents. Piece of cake? Hardly, the first president I got was Chester Arthur.

EverQuest Cheaters

According to BBC NEWS....

"A war is raging for the heart of the popular online fantasy game EverQuest. But this battle is not being fought between players and marauding hordes of monsters. Instead the fight is between Sony, who run the game, and an anonymous group of programmers who have created software that makes the game almost too easy to play."

So, hackers have whipped up a Linux program that draws a map of the world in EverQuest and tells you exactly where the monsters are, thus taking 90% of the challenge out of the game. Seems like only short-term fun to me.

Education 4 Kids

I checked out the Education 4 Kids site and found that it left much to be desired. After trying out the Time Experience Drill and the Money Experience Drill, I thought that conceptually, these games were strong, but the overall layout of the pages would probably not be very visually appealing for the intended audience. This site could certainly use more graphics.

Virtual Engineering

Explore large structures and what it takes to build them with BUILDING BIG™, a five-part PBS television series and Web site from WGBH Boston." Aimed at middle school students, the web site contains hands-on labs, activities and challenges that relate to bridges, domes, tunnels and skyscrapers. You can also virtually experiment with loads, materials and shapes. Can you select the appropriate material to build a 50-story deluxe apartment building? Or pick the best way to construct a subway tunnel through the soft sand underneath a city? How about finding the right bridge for a particular location?
Happy building!

Simulating Work - What Works

I guess I am infatuated with simulations. This is my second posting on an article about what works and doesn't work in simulation training with adults...but this is simply a great article! Wade through the first paragraph extolling the virtues of simulation training (yeah, yeah, yeah - we know all that or we wouldn't be reading this article!) to get to the good stuff. Melinda Jackson, the author, talks about how adult learners would rather interact with photo-realistic images of coworkers and supervisors than cartoons, but that they would rather see their online work environment and equipment in an uncluttered, illustrative mode (the panoramic photo image was too cluttered and overwhelming). Another thing I appreciated in this article as it's intuitive but often overlooked - the learner appreciates a good story! Vernacular of the work place, a friendly coworker (like Joe (above) who drives the forklifts and doesn't like to follow the speed limits), a hard-nosed supervisor...you can combine all these elements in interesting ways to teach and entertain at the same time. It's more work than creating page turning electronic learning with multiple choice and true/false tests at the end...but what would YOU choose if you were the learner?

Read the article

Freebies!

Now that I have your attention...

Here are three resources that I have come to rely on to help me plan interesting training and keep up with the latest and greatest technology and methodology.

- Sign up to receive a FREE monthly hardcopy magazine about educational technology with interesting, high quality articles.

- Register with Thiagi to get his monthly newsletter link with teasers via e-mail. Very impressive...again, FREEEEE!

- Become a member (for FREE) of the North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA) and get full access to the website, use of the mailing list, and an electronic copy of their newsletter, SIMAGES

E-mail me at filli@ix.netcom.com if you have problems with these links.

3 Million Lines of Code

Something to look forward to: The Sims are going online! The details can be found in Geoff Keighley's interview with Will Wright, the most interesting game designer out there.


"Wright's still as amiable as ever, but he's clearly stressed out. It's understandable. On December 17, he will launch his most ambitious game ever: The Sims Online, the massively multiplayer follow-up to The Sims, the blockbuster game that has sold more than 8 million copies and is still at the top of the charts. With a team of more than a hundred working on The Sims Online, a budget rumored to be north of $25 million, and more than 3 million lines of code to make it all work, Wright sums up his new game's scope with an apt analogy: "In many ways, building The Sims Online compared to The Sims is like the difference between building the space shuttle and a Chevrolet. It's easily 10 times more complicated than The Sims."

This article describes some of details of the creative design process and is well worth reading!

KPBS Kids :-)

KPBS just revamped its site and it has a great section for kids to enjoy activities that include their favorite morning characters. The specific page is called KPBS Kids.

It has interactive games, recipes, and other fun activities for the kids. What's really neat is that kids get to pick a specific skill that they wish to challenge. KPBS Kids also has tips and activity resources for parents and teachers.

Web-based flash game for girls on space exploration

Like Erika and Darleen, I think web-based flash games are cool. While our group has been browsing the web for these kinds of things related to math, science, engineering and technology-- I've noticed that some of them are poorly designed. This one combines space exploration with trivia. Yes, trivia.

"Let's Bore No More"

Check out the November installment of Thiagi's Play for Performance online newsletter. It's full of useful information and "pithy sayings." A highlight from this issue is an interview with speaker/facilitator Ken Bellemare, who likes to incorporate magic in his presentations. His motto is "Let's bore no more." The interview includes instructions for incorporating a magic trick that can be used as an icebreaker or problem-solving activity. On the surface, it might seem that magic tricks would be cheap attempt at perceptual arousal, but Bellemare says he is always certain to tie in the trick closely to the content. There are also links to an online game shell called SEQUENCE that helps learners organize and order content. Learn about feudalism or employees' emotional responses to organizational change.

Cross cultural myth making

Lucas Learning has a Make-A-Hero game that enables the player to create a character, print it out, and then complete guided activities about the character. You can place the character in various locations, including the USA which inexplicably appears to be the inside of a spaceship! The activities include an interview, a scavenger hunt, and others. This game is an example that incorporates different types of media and activities.

New Software from Thiagi

Our group used new software from CarsonMedia called "eGames by Thiagi" to create some activities for our Boredom Case assignment. This software enables you to quickly create Flash-based games like Catergorize, Hangman, and Match. Thiagi's games are time-tested and engaging for learners. And now they are easily displayed on Web pages as Flash movies!

Scroll to the bottom of the page to download a free evaluation version of the software.

Jeepers Veepers

Both impressive and a little eerie, Veeperization is a new "emotive interface" technology. You start with any 2-D image of yourself, load it into the program, and then drag and drop "data points" onto key movement areas of facial expression, like the corners of the eyes, mouth and eyebrows. The 2-D image is mapped onto a 3-D head and then something magical happens: The static image gets a breath of life. Instant animation!

The implications for e-learning and gaming are widespread, and Veepers are only one-tenth the cost-per-minute of professional video and take only 2 percent the file size of streaming video. Could this be the new alternative to streaming video?

Read the article

and Bingo was his name-o!

I borrowed a book from The Child's Primary School library (that's where I work) called Curious Customs: the Stories Behind 296 Popular American Rituals. One of our iconic and curious customs is BINGO! The book states BINGO is a lottery: you buy a card (ticket) with the anticipation of winning some dough from the nun calling the numbers.

A quick search online shows the BINGO community is large and in charge! No only can you play online BINGO for dough, you also can buy Santa BINGO markers, BINGO-themed apparel, and ergonomic BINGO seats!

More fun Flash Games!!!

Like Darleen, I LOVE Flash games. I suck at playing them, but I love looking at them and dreamin... one day I'll be able to design like that... GlobZ is full of amazing, yet simple design. I'm learning a lot of navigational possibilities through the game design: GlobZ uses a lot of keyboard maneuvering, while I tend to think of only using the mouse.

FYI: Viral pursuit is super fun!

I am Addicted to Orisinal Games

Okay, the Orisinal site is the coolest! My friend sent this to me a while back and I had long since forgotten it in my endless menu of favorites. All of the games on this site were created with Flash. My favorite game is Bubble Bees. The idea is so simple: you have to catch bees in bubbles. I'm getting better each time I play, but I'm certainly not on the high score list. Many of the games have great background music to help you get in the game mode. You will most certainly want to check these games out because they're just plain fun. :)

So, what is a game?

Here’s an interesting (and timely) site by Greg Costikyan, a game developer, about what components are included in a good computer game. He talks about decision-making, goals, opposition, managing resources, game tokens, and information. There’s a lot of interesting information here. More still to ponder on issues like role-playing, socializing, simulation and narrative tension. Check it out…and, there’s a link at the bottom that leads to other game design articles. Oh, and, the title is cool: I have no words & I must design

Teaching History With Videogames

TechTV very rarely has an educational slant in there reporting. Yet, in this spot TechTV features some of the work of Ed and Stephanie Vinces, teachers and co-owners of Pacifica Computer Pros in Pacifica, California. Ed and Stephanie Vinces use videogames, e.g. Medieval Times, in their classrooms to teach history. Makes me almost want to be a kid again.

The World's Most Popular Board Game

Did you know that the Monopoly game in its original incarnation was designed, in part, to "teach the virtues of the Single-Tax Movement"? The company that now distributes the game (perhaps not surprisingly) rejected it in its original form. But the game did find a niche at economics departments at places such as Princeton University. Today NPR's Morning Edition program aired an in-depth story about the history of the game. Read (or listen) to the report.

Teach Language with Games

Edutainment: How To Teach Language With Fun and Games is a teaching manual chock-full of fast-paced, high-energy learning games for ESL and EFL instructors. The site offers a sample of free games which seem wonderful, and the publishers claim they save the best ones for those who buy the book! My favorite game involves listening to, reading, writing, and singing the lyrics to popular songs by the Beatles, the Monkees, and Diana Ross.

Cerebral Challenge

Cartoon Network has a companion website and in it are some fun games that revolve around different animated characters. I particularly liked Cerebral Challenge as it tests your memory skills. Remember that frustrating memory game you played as a child? As you click onto different crates, different cartoon characters pop out and you have to remember where the "twin" or "matching character" is. It is particularly motivating because it provides all of those neat sound effects, immediate feedback, and it celebrates with a song when you finally find all of them. It also lets you know if you're lame with short-term memory skills. Heh heh...

Memory Games

Exploratorium, the online museum of science, art, and human perception, is currently hosting a Memory Exhibition , in which patrons can play four games designed to improve memory skills. The game instructions are succinct, feedback is provided, and a brief explanation of the principle behind each game is given, along with ideas for real-life application. The games can be played multiple times for improved performance. Bookmark this site or you might forget it!

Did you know...

Did you know that the average population of the world's 100 largest cities was 200,000 in 1800 and over 5 million in 1990? If not, you might want to visit the United Nations Publications' CyberSchoolBus Cities of Today, Cities of Tomorrow interdisciplinary curriculum. The curriculum, designed for grades 5-7 and 8-11, was developed after the "City Summit" in 1996 to illustrate the history, potential, and problems of urbanization around the globe. Although the units are primarily text-based, there are also many activities and some interactive quizzes. At completion of the 6 week program, students should have the knowledge and skills to create their own ideal city. There are also many other offerings in the CyberSchoolBus including units on Peace, Human Rights, and Cleaner Oceans.

Gamequarium

"The site that swims with learning fun", Gamequarium is a site offering free game resources for teachers of grades pre-K to 6+. Free games in the areas of Language Arts, Math, and Music, are just a few of the examples available for download. Links to other sites for teachers are available. Examples of games created by students (using Quia.com) are also provided. It seems like a good resource for teachers who would like to use games in their teaching, or even to interest their students in game design.