The 2008 Second European Conference on Game-Based Learning will be held in Barcelona, Spain, October 16-17, hosted by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Speaker Bios
Conference Program
If you are working in a K-12 setting and interested in sharing your ideas about game-based learning, please leave me a message. I'm especially interested in how interactive games support engaged, meaningful learning.
May 24, 2008
May 23, 2008
Engaged Learning Revisited: Four videoclips for reflection....
Last October, I shared a couple of videos to highlight a discussion about engaged learning in a post on my TechPsych blog. Today, I received a thoughtful comment from a teacher who was moved by the videos. I thought that I'd recycle that post and add two other videos that provide related messages in ways that can not be conveyed effectively by words alone:
From the October TechPsych post:
Those who follow my blogs know that I usually focus on the positive- engaging technologies, exciting research, interesting websites, and successes of others worth sharing. Today I came across a video that got me thinking about the importance of engaged learning, a topic I've written about in the past.
Much effort is extended in our high schools to prepare students for the "real" learning that will take place in college. With the increased emphasis on testing, it seems like the moment a child enters kindergarten, one of the main goals is to prepare for learning the skills needed in the following grade. Every student must be "ready".
Ready for....this?
In today's digital world, traditional word-based instruction doesn't always result in experiences that engage the hearts and minds of young people.
The video below was created by students involved in the Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University. Michael Wesch is the professor behind this group. At the beginning of the video, the camera slowly peers around an empty university lecture hall, with the the following quote superimposed over the scene:
"Today's child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules." -Marshall McLuhan, 1967
Although the quote is now forty years old, the message communicated in this video is clear. Despite technology, things haven't really changed, as traditional methods of teaching tend to disengage rather than engage a good number of students.
After viewing the above video, watch this video, "When I grow up I want to be a teacher", a parody of a Monster.com commercial.
For a broader perspective, take some time to reflect on the following video, originally created by Karl Fisch, and posted to his blog, the Fischbowl:
"A staff development blog for Arapahoe High School teachers exploring constructivism and 21st century learning skills. The opinions expressed here are the personal views of Karl Fisch - and various other teachers at Arapahoe - and do not (necessarily) reflect the views of Littleton Public Schools."
DID YOU KNOW? SHIFT HAPPENS
"DEBUNKING THE MYTHS OF THE THIRD WORLD" is Hans Rosling's presentation at TED 2006 is a great example of the use of presenting information supported by engaging information techniques. More videos are on the Gapminder website. This video is about 20 minutes long, but worth every second.
"With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Prof. Hans Rosling uses software from Gapminder debunks a few myths about the "developing" world. This global health visionary has discovered a powerful new way to communicate complex data about the world; his remarkable interactive graphs help deliver profound insights about global trends and will change forever the way you think about "us" and "them." Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a nonprofit that brings vital global data to life."
From the October TechPsych post:
Those who follow my blogs know that I usually focus on the positive- engaging technologies, exciting research, interesting websites, and successes of others worth sharing. Today I came across a video that got me thinking about the importance of engaged learning, a topic I've written about in the past.
Much effort is extended in our high schools to prepare students for the "real" learning that will take place in college. With the increased emphasis on testing, it seems like the moment a child enters kindergarten, one of the main goals is to prepare for learning the skills needed in the following grade. Every student must be "ready".
Ready for....this?
In today's digital world, traditional word-based instruction doesn't always result in experiences that engage the hearts and minds of young people.
The video below was created by students involved in the Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University. Michael Wesch is the professor behind this group. At the beginning of the video, the camera slowly peers around an empty university lecture hall, with the the following quote superimposed over the scene:
"Today's child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules." -Marshall McLuhan, 1967
Although the quote is now forty years old, the message communicated in this video is clear. Despite technology, things haven't really changed, as traditional methods of teaching tend to disengage rather than engage a good number of students.
After viewing the above video, watch this video, "When I grow up I want to be a teacher", a parody of a Monster.com commercial.
For a broader perspective, take some time to reflect on the following video, originally created by Karl Fisch, and posted to his blog, the Fischbowl:
"A staff development blog for Arapahoe High School teachers exploring constructivism and 21st century learning skills. The opinions expressed here are the personal views of Karl Fisch - and various other teachers at Arapahoe - and do not (necessarily) reflect the views of Littleton Public Schools."
DID YOU KNOW? SHIFT HAPPENS
"DEBUNKING THE MYTHS OF THE THIRD WORLD" is Hans Rosling's presentation at TED 2006 is a great example of the use of presenting information supported by engaging information techniques. More videos are on the Gapminder website. This video is about 20 minutes long, but worth every second.
"With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Prof. Hans Rosling uses software from Gapminder debunks a few myths about the "developing" world. This global health visionary has discovered a powerful new way to communicate complex data about the world; his remarkable interactive graphs help deliver profound insights about global trends and will change forever the way you think about "us" and "them." Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a nonprofit that brings vital global data to life."
May 21, 2008
Cross Post: One Laptop Per Child's Redesign- Dual Touchscreens, Flexibile Use
"Hundred-dollar laptop, revisited: The next-generation version of the One Laptop per Child machine will dispense with keypads. It can be folded flat to make one larger screen (left); here, two children could play a game, each using the touch-screen capability. Or it can be held on its side and used as an electronic book (right)."
I'm impressed with the new design of the OLPC, the dual touch screen, the support of collaboration and sharing between children, and the flexibility it will provide educators and students. It can even be used as an e-Book! This laptop would be welcomed in UDL classrooms.
For detailed information about the new OLPC laptop, which has not yet been released, read David Talbot's article in the MIT Technology Review.
I want one.
May 20, 2008
NUI-Group Member Bridger Maxwell Receives High School Science Fair Award for Multi-Touch Screen Project
Yet another post about a NUI group member... Bridger Maxwell, a high school student at the Utah County Academy of Sciences, submitted his multi-touch screen to the science fair, and went on to win first place in the engineering category, and now will be competing in the International Science and Engineering Fair.
Bridger has created "Lumen", a puzzle game for OSX and Windows, and markets this through his business, Fiery Ferret.
Even More Multi-Touch, Delivered by NUI...
May 20, 2008
NUI announces delivery of their multi-touch solution for Cityscape, Abu Dhabi 2008
www.natural-ui.com
Natural User Interface Europe Ltd.
May 19, 2008
More Multi-Touch from members of the NUI group!
It is always exciting to see what members of the NUI group are doing!
Here is a new video of a multi-touch creation by some of the members of the NUI group. Although this is a proof-of-concept example, it is fun to see how it is played out, using the little iPhone-like touch-pad widgets as a navigation tool for the large screen.
Read the "Multi-touch Goodness" article in Gizmodo of an interview with Christian Moore about this demo and his Lux open-source framework. (Christian is a colleague of Harry van der Veen, both members of the NUI group.)
Here is an excerpt from the interview:
"JD: Why Flash?
CM: Because it's fast to prototype in. However, the software is broken into several segments. One C++ application that tracks hands that talks to Flash... WPF... or another C++ app... and basically everything you can imagine. You can enable multitouch in any environment, like Cocoa."
High-resolution screen shots and additional information can be found on the nuiman website.
For my tech-minded readers:
I'm pretty sure that the C++ application that track hands and fingers in the video demo uses Touchlib, a library for creating multi-touch interaction. Touchlib can work with TUIO, a protocol for tabletop tangible user interfaces. Applications such as Flash and Processing support TUIO. For more information about TUIO, read "TUIO: A Protocol for Table-Top Tangible User Interfaces".
(Information from the NUI group website mentions that OpenCV, or Open Computer Vision Library, found on SourceForge, can support blog detection and tracking.)
The people behind TUIO are from the Reactable project, of the Music Technology Group at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona:
Here is my plug for the NUI group, once again!
"The NUI group, or Natural User Interface Group, is an interactive media group researching and creating open source machine sensing techniques to benefit artistic and educational applications.
We offer a collaborative environment for developers that are interested in learning and sharing new HCI (Human Computer Interaction) methods and concepts. This may include topics such as: voice/handwriting/gesture recognition, touch computing, computer vision, and information visualization."
FYI
I came across the Harry van der Veen of the NUI group in early 2007 when I was working on touch-screen projects for my HCI and Ubicomp classes, and I'm inspired by all of the creativity I've seen coming from this group.
If you'd like to see more demos, visit the Natural User Interface website, a commercial out-growth of Harry and his colleague's work, where you can view a reel that includes a few touch-screen games. I love the vision statement on this site:
"Technology should enable us to interact with computers, in the same way we interact with the real world; in a way which is natural to us, namely through gestures, expressions, movements, and manipulations. Our vision is to change the way people interact with computers."
Here is a new video of a multi-touch creation by some of the members of the NUI group. Although this is a proof-of-concept example, it is fun to see how it is played out, using the little iPhone-like touch-pad widgets as a navigation tool for the large screen.
Read the "Multi-touch Goodness" article in Gizmodo of an interview with Christian Moore about this demo and his Lux open-source framework. (Christian is a colleague of Harry van der Veen, both members of the NUI group.)
Here is an excerpt from the interview:
"JD: Why Flash?
CM: Because it's fast to prototype in. However, the software is broken into several segments. One C++ application that tracks hands that talks to Flash... WPF... or another C++ app... and basically everything you can imagine. You can enable multitouch in any environment, like Cocoa."
High-resolution screen shots and additional information can be found on the nuiman website.
For my tech-minded readers:
I'm pretty sure that the C++ application that track hands and fingers in the video demo uses Touchlib, a library for creating multi-touch interaction. Touchlib can work with TUIO, a protocol for tabletop tangible user interfaces. Applications such as Flash and Processing support TUIO. For more information about TUIO, read "TUIO: A Protocol for Table-Top Tangible User Interfaces".
(Information from the NUI group website mentions that OpenCV, or Open Computer Vision Library, found on SourceForge, can support blog detection and tracking.)
The people behind TUIO are from the Reactable project, of the Music Technology Group at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona:
Here is my plug for the NUI group, once again!
"The NUI group, or Natural User Interface Group, is an interactive media group researching and creating open source machine sensing techniques to benefit artistic and educational applications.
We offer a collaborative environment for developers that are interested in learning and sharing new HCI (Human Computer Interaction) methods and concepts. This may include topics such as: voice/handwriting/gesture recognition, touch computing, computer vision, and information visualization."
FYI
I came across the Harry van der Veen of the NUI group in early 2007 when I was working on touch-screen projects for my HCI and Ubicomp classes, and I'm inspired by all of the creativity I've seen coming from this group.
If you'd like to see more demos, visit the Natural User Interface website, a commercial out-growth of Harry and his colleague's work, where you can view a reel that includes a few touch-screen games. I love the vision statement on this site:
"Technology should enable us to interact with computers, in the same way we interact with the real world; in a way which is natural to us, namely through gestures, expressions, movements, and manipulations. Our vision is to change the way people interact with computers."
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