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Showing posts from March, 2013

Autodesk Digital STEAM For a Serious Game-based Curriculum

Via: Autodesk Digital STEAM Workshop The Autodesk Digital STEAM Workshop is an innovative, highly visual curriculum that inspires students to solve real-world challenges using Autodesk software, while preparing them for the Autodesk Certified User exam. It offers an engaging project based learning experience that heavily relies on Serious Gameplay. Through Educational Serious Games, a 3D project viewer, and Design Thinking videos the curriculum engages students while teaching and reinforcing the learning of core Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM) concepts in a fun way. Supporting career and technical education program requirements, the curriculum introduces students to careers in design through videos from professionals in today’s workforce, providing students with a solid introduction to design regardless of their academic path or career choice. Autodesk announced last week the launch of its first set of Serious Game-based, Digital STEAM iPad

Serious Games Improve Navigation Skills For People With Vision Disabilities

Via: Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) – Development of an Audio-based Virtual Gaming Environment to Assist with Navigation Skills in the Blind   Connors, E. C., Yazzolino, L. A., Sánchez, J., Merabet, L. B. Development of an Audio-based Virtual Gaming Environment to Assist with Navigation Skills in the Blind. J. Vis. Exp. (73), e50272, doi:10.3791/50272 (2013) On March 27 th , JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments) published a new video article by Dr. Lotfi Merabet showing how researchers in the Department of Ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Harvard Medical School have developed a Serious Game to help blind individuals improve navigation skills and develop a cognitive spatial map of unfamiliar buildings and public locations (please find also Serious Gaming Your Way To Better Vision ). The technique utilizes computer generated layouts of public buildings and spatial sensory feedback to synthesize a virtual world that mi

Serious Games Immersing Students In Core Economic Concepts

Via: Pennsylvania State University’s Education Gaming Commons – ECON U One of the challenges of teaching ECON 102 (Intro to Microeconomics) is finding ways for students to place conceptual knowledge of economics into a context that means something to them (please find also Active Learning With Business Serious Games In Higher Education ). Two Penn State economics professors, Dirk Mateer and Dave Brown, have worked with the Educational Gaming Commons (EGC) to create the "Serious Game"  EconU , which is being used for learning core economic concepts and may serve as the capstone project for  ECON 102  students. EconU is a web based strategy game where players take on the role of a fictional University administrator who must build, guide and sustain a fictional University to economic sustainability. EconU is designed to provide players with an opportunity to critically think and apply their knowledge of key microeconomic concepts su

NeuroGaming Conference For Cognitive Serious Gaming Platforms

Via:  SharpBrains  –  Upcoming NeuroGaming 2013 Conference and Expo in San Francisco Alvaro Fernandez, owner at SharpBrains (please find also Serious Games & SharpBrains Creating Global Awareness For Brain Fitness ) brings to our attention that early-bird reg­is­tra­tion to the first ever Neu­roGam­ing Con­fer­ence expires on April 1st, 2013.  Alvaro Fernandez will be run­ning the ses­sion Think, Think, Think: Cog­ni­tive Gam­ing Plat­forms , on May 1st. This panel will dis­cuss how break­through tech­nolo­gies such as tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion, ultra­sonic brain stim­u­la­tion, eye track­ing and brain sim­u­la­tion are being used to boost players’ cog­ni­tive per­for­mance. The NeuroGaming 2013 Conference and Expo , to be held in San Francisco, May 1-2, 2013, at the Yetizen Game Innovation Lab, 540 Howard Street, is dedicated to a new and rapidly growing segment of the game industry that shall engage the minds of players in fundamen

Serious Games At MIT Lincoln Lab

Via: Polygon - PAX East 2013: All The Games And News, Live From Boston Polygon reports that five scientists from the Lincoln Lab hosted a panel at PAX East 2013 to discuss the growing use of "Serious Games" as tools to assist in solving national security problems, which is the center's primary purview (please find also Game Technologies for Homeland Security Training ).  The panelists' discussion centered on the applications games have for the kinds of issues that the Lincoln Lab is tackling, as well as some of the unique challenges the creators of such games face. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Lab, a federally funded research and development center, focuses on real-world problem solving through applications of technology and that technology now includes video games. Here are the article highlights: According to Polygon’s website, Adam Norige, technical staff for homeland security at Lincoln Lab, said that a majo

2013 National STEM Serious Game Challenge Closes In One Month

The National STEM Video Game Challenge, now in its third edition, is a multi-year competition (please find also 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge Now Open For Entries ) that aims to motivate children's interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) learning by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games. Click on the link below to enter and submit your game – the deadline is April 24, 2013. The Challenge Middle and high school youth are encouraged to submit their original game designs for the opportunity to earn recognition and prizes for themselves, as well as monetary prizes for their schools. Check out below for more information on the prize categories, eligibility and streams for 2013. Then, head over to the Students section to learn about the many tools you can use to make your game and start designing!  This year, organizers are also offering mentors opportunities to get involved throu

Totem Learning Makes Bespoke Serious Games More Accessible To All

Over the last couple of years, I have often blogged about the challenges of shaping the Serious Games field from a movement into a viable and growing market. Early adopters had focused heavily on advances in design, pedagogy, and technology and sparingly on business development models, but this is about to change. The Serious Games Market is now experiencing a wider variety in business models, moving away from the work-for-hire dominant one, to accommodate new ways of doing business and accelerate Serious Games large scale adoption (please find also my recent post The Fastest Growing Database Of Educational Serious Games ). A new market entrant committed to this market positioning is Totem Learning (a management buy-out from PIXELearning). Acknowledging that the main barriers to Serious Games bespoke development have been price and timelines, Totem Learning has created Your Game : Your content  in a bespoke Serious Game. The concept of Your Game is an office tour

Serious Gaming In Education Can Mirror Formative Assessments

Understanding why players become so absorbed and focused that they seem to be achieving the state of “flow” that psychologists use to describe master musicians and champion athletes, but gamers get there right away instead of having to train for years, is part of the challenge educators shall face to get the most from "Serious Games" in the classroom. The Assessment Challenge For Institutionalizing Serious Games In Education In my previous posts Serious Games Embed New Metrics and Disconnects between Serious Games Wins and Report Cards for Students ’ Classroom Skills I had surfaced one major challenge for institutionalizing Serious Games in Education: “How do we measure success when facing discontinuity?” As potentially every education program, every curriculum, can be reshaped over the next few years by the use of Serious Games, I anticipated that traditional standardized measurements of varying levels of comprehension within a subject area will tend to

Serious Games On Google+ Communities

Dear All, I have been futuring the Serious Games space since 2006, witnessing organizations introducing games to make company's value proposition more compelling and understanding how games have been utilized for education and learning. Serious Games are now successfully being developed and deployed all over the world and for a variety of applications. I have created a public Serious Games space on Google+ Communities as a way to connect Serious Games researchers, developers, advocates and adopters and share Serious Games breakthroughs. About A place where people can get together to share ideas and get the most out of Serious Games deployment Topics Introductions Discussion Showcase Building Culture Events You are all invited to join Serious Games Google+ Community at https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/101417964515651853744 Warmly, Eliane

Fishing Cactus New Website Dedicated To Serious Games Division

Fishing Cactus new website (Please find also Algo-Bot:Serious Games Teaching Logic Of Programming ), 100% dedicated to Serious Games development is now open at Fishing Cactus Serious Game Division . Fishing Cactus  is a Belgian video game development studio founded in 2008 by four experienced AAA talents, from the ashes of 10Tacle (Totems, Urban Race). From 2010 onwards,  Fishing Cactus   has started working relentlessly on the development of Serious Games. Behind the scenes, for the last three years, more and more companies have turned to   Fishing Cactus   for research and development on several Serious Games projects that have an impact either on resource management and staff training or on essential sectors such as healthcare. At the new website you’ll find Fishing Cactus main  past projects  presented in great detail, with videos and screenshots. There you’ll also find information about their  reputable clients  and  Serious Games Philosophy   Fishing

InViVo Inspiring The Fast-Growing Medical Serious Gaming Field

Via: InViVo Communications™ Inc. - InViVo Medical Gaming   In my previous post Crossing the Chasm With Serious Games For Medical Education , I took a stand for the possibility of Medical Games becoming one of the first "Serious Games" segments to  Cross the Chasm  between early adopters and early majority, paving the way for disruptive innovation in Medical Education. InViVo Communications Inc. provides additional hard evidence that Medical Serious Games are on the fast-track to large scale adoption. Established in 1998, InViVo is a Medical Multimedia Company based in Toronto, Canada, recognized internationally for developing 3D medical animation, medical illustration, and interactive media, including a progressive work in Medical Serious Games. Many of the team members are graduates of the Biomedical Communications (BMC) masters program offered by the Institute of Medical Science at the University Of Toronto, Canada InViVo’ s aspirational g