Jessica's blog

In this article in the Education Update Online, Andrew Gardner analyzes the uses of virtual world simulations, serious games, and game design in educational environments. He explores a few examples, including Civilization, a resource management strategy game in which the goal is to build an effective civilization.

Radford University professor and National Science Foundation award recipient Matt Dunleavy, is leading a team of students from the School of Teacher Education and Leadership (STEL) in collaboration with Harvard University, MIT, Hewlett Packard Labs and Radford City Public Schools in an effort to explore opportunities for augmented reality in the Radford, Virginia elementary school district. According to this article from The Radford Times, Dunleavy is heading the Radford Outdoor Augmented Reality Project (ROAR) for which he received a $500,000 National Science Foundation grant. Dunleavy will be investigating the types of skills that can be acquired and honed from the integration of real-world/environmental play and computer-generated data. The game that ROAR will test in November will examine the combination of locative games with the school district's Learning Standards requirements. The research team will implement the games in outdoor environments, such as schoolyards, and use handheld devices, such as Global Positioning Systems, to aid and enhance game play.

I recently had the opportunity to play Little Big Planet as well as Spore. I found that these games complemented each other well. Little Big Planet is a level building game that challenges users to investigate creative methods of moving characters from the beginning to the end of the game—whether that be via magical landscapes or robotic machines. Spore, is a character creation game that asks users to participate in the development of a character, who begins its life as a cell.

In this 10/07/08 New York Times article, Winnie Hu explores the recent efforts by several New York city schools to introduce the math-based video game Dimension M into their curriculum. This Fall, the game was placed in 109 New York City middle schools and teachers are already seeing students' progress in math class.