Dire Straits is a game. At its core, Dire Staits is a variant of Seymour Papert’s LOGO program built on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Scratch software. Incorporating a nautical theme, this game helps upper elementary and middle school students refine their understanding of lines, angles, rotations, and general spatial ability. Three students (Peter, Matt, …
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for: ‘Games’
The World Peace Game
World Peace…and other 4th-grade achievements is premiering this week at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX. This documentary focuses on a local Charlottesville teacher, John Hunter, and his fourth grade students. The movie highlights Hunter’s background and features his self-created game, The World Peace Game, “a hands-on political simulation that gives players the opportunity to …
The Problem with Polygons
This short video is ripe for exploration in all geometry classrooms. Plus, I would love to see Unlimited Detail Technology powering a game on my XBox.
Mysterious Pictures = Games, Stories, Math Problems
I doubt that there are many people who would look at this image and know how to discover that there is a game hidden within the black and white lines and pixels. It’s curiously ambiguous, and provocatively unrelated to education. Yes, this image contains a game. However, most people would likely jump to the superficial …
Fun & Recycling
I love the idea, and it is apparent that using game-like qualities increase motivation to change. Let me repeat: I love the idea, creation, and ultimate objective: Recycle. If the incentive of the game is stripped away from the objective (recycle), what do you think would happen? If these “game-recycling machines” were ubiquitous, would that …
The State of Games
cc licensed flickr photo shared by neko_4343 In A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Raph Koster writes: It’s worth asking ourselves what skills are more commonly needed today. Games should be evolving toward teaching us those skills. The entire spread of games for children is fairly limited and hasn’t changed much. The basic skills …
The Suckiness Quotient
Do educational games suck? Hmmm…. Scott McLeod seems to think that the suckiness factor is pretty high, especially the visual component that “typical” edutainment titles portray. I have to admit that my first, immediate reaction was one of agreement. The examples of educational titles (FunBrain Math Baseball, eSchoolOnline eMath Pretest, Hotmath Number Cop) that he …
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