Games and Learning: Lure of the Labyrinth, a Middle School Online Pre-algebra/literacy game - Watch the Video, Play the Game, and Follow Links to Related Resources

"Maryland Public Television (MPT) and MIT Education Arcade teamed up with FableVision to create Lure of the Labyrinth, an innovative gaming-meets-storytelling approach to improve math and literacy among middle-school students. Plunge into a shadowy, moster-filled factory on a mission to rescue your missing pet. Can you maneuver through math problems and find your beloved pet in time!?"

The Lure of the Labyrinth middle-school pre-algebra game is linked to state and national math standards and comes with good resources for teachers. On the For Educators page, teachers (and parents) can find information about how students can play the game, how it can be incorporated into the classroom setting, how to prepare the students for playing the game, how to use the game to support working in pairs and group, and more. Below is the introductory video:

Scot Osterweil and his team at MIT's Education Arcade, designed Lure of the Labyrinth. Scot is the research director of the Education Arcade, and has worked on software such as InspireData (Inspiration Software). He is the former Senior Designer at TERC, an R & D for math and science education.













RELATED


Klopfer, D., Osterweil,S., Groff, J., & Hass, J. (2009) The Instructional Power of Digital Games, Social Networking, Simulations, and How Teachers Can Leverage Them. Education Arcade, MIT (pdf)
Regarding barriers to adopting digital games, social networking, and simulation technologies in the school, the article reviews the work of Groff and Mouza:
"Groff and Mouza (2008) discuss six central factors, each with its own critical variables, that interact with one another to produce barriers to implementing technological innovations in the classroom: (a) Research & Policy factors, (b) District/School factors, (c) factors associated with the Teacher, (d) factors associated with the Technology- Enhanced Project, (e) factors associated with the Students, and (f) factors inherent to Technology itself.

Klopfer, E., Osterweil, S., Salen, K. (2009) Moving Learning Games Forward: Obstacles, Opportunities & Openess.  The Education Arcade, MIT (pdf)

Gee. J.P, & Levine, M.H. Welcome to Our Virtual Worlds (pdf) Educational Leadership, Literacy 2.0, March 2009, Vol. 66, (6).  ASCD
"The United States is witnessing a growing student engagement crisis. With dropout rates approaching 50 percent in many urban school districts (Swanson, 2008) and recent education surveys showing that students are overwhelmingly bored in school (Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison, 2006; Yazzie-Mintz, 2007), we clearly need to find new ways to motivate learners."


"A crucial first step in promoting student engagement is to rethink literacy for the 21st century. One path to this new learning equation comes, perhaps paradoxically, from popular culture. Many young people today play long and difficult video games that involve complex thinking and problem solving married to complex language. Although the most frequent criticism of video games is that many involve shooting and killing, a good many focus on other things. Civilization and Rise of Nations force players to think on a large scale about history, development across time, and civilizations. SimCity, The Sims, and, for very young children, Animal Crossing ask players to build and sustain cities and communities. Age of Mythology players regularly read and write about mythologies across the world, specifically from Greek, Egyptian, and Norse civilizations. Some gamers write strategy guides for the games they play—technical writing at its best—and share them over the Internet."


James Paul Gee is the author of a number of publications regarding games and learning. He is the author of Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning, and Literacy.  He is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University.

Klopfer, E. (2008) Augmented Learning Research and Design of Mobile Educational Games. MIT Press.

 
MIT STEP's Handheld Augmented Reality Simulations Site

Eric Klopfer is involved with MIT's StarLogo project. The newest version of StarLogo is StarLogo TNG.  StarLogo Tim is part of MIT's Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP)
Here are some links found on the STEP website:
MyWorld: Next Generation Wireless Ubiquitous Simulation Games
PDA Participatory Simulations

Scot Osterweil (MIT) The Four Freedoms of Play

"Scot Osterweil, a pioneer in learning and game play, shares his thoughts on the concept of "The Four Freedoms of Play." Scot Osterweil works at MIT as the Education Arcade Research Director. Here Scot presents to the Harvard Business School in Cambridge, MA in a weekly education technology forum called BrainGain."

Kurt Squire did his doctoral research on the use of Sid Meier's Civilization to teach social studies. Resources for how the game can be used in education can be found at the CivWorld website.  Kurt is the co-founder and current director of the Games + Learning + Society (GLS) website, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is an assistant professor.




There are an increasing number of universities offering coursework related to the design and development of games for learning and education.

Globe4D: See how the Earth changed over time!

Something like this should be in every school's media center!


Globe4D - ICT Delta 2010 from Globe4D on Vimeo.

"Globe4D is an interactive, four-dimensional globe. It's a projection of the Earth's surface on a physical sphere. It shows the historical movement of the continents as its main feature, but it is also capable of displaying all kinds of other geographical data such as climate changes, plant growth, radiation, rainfall, forest fires, seasons, airplane routes, and more."




Publication:


Companje, R., van Dijk, N., Hogenbirk, H., Mast, D., Globe4D: Time traveling with an interactive four-dimensional globe.  Proc. MM '06, ACM

SMART Table Videos

One of the schools I serve as a school psychologist will be getting a SMARTTable. We've decided to enter the SMART Table multi-touch application contest, which means that we'll have to put our ideas into action soon, July 1st, to be exact. (We will be working on this project after work hours.)

The purpose of this post is to provide a spot to keep videos related to the SMARTTable, as well as other multi-touch tables used with students, so team members watch the table in action. (I will move this content to a special website for this project when I get a moment!)

Our school recently received about 8 SMARTBoards, and since every classroom is geared for students with severe disabilities, including autism, I thought I'd share the following video first. The students have started to work cooperatively and have begun to develop more communication skills:

SMARTBOARD AND STUDENTS WITH SEVERE DISABILITIES

(The teacher in this video uses theZACH browser, designed for students with autism, to help them independently navigate to interactive websites. The Zac browser can be navigated with a Wii remote controller, too.)

SMARTTable- Engaged Students from Davie County


ALIVE OR NOT ALIVE


ANIMAL NEEDS:


ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION


1MORE, 1 LESS

"In this table activity 1 More, 1 Less students work on a series of touch exercises in the tables Multiple Choice, Hot Spaces and Hot Spots applications where they can practice simple addition and subtraction."

WHAT IS REAL ABOUT PLANTS AND ANIMALS?


ALPHABET

"In this table activity Alphabet students work on a series of touch exercises in the tables Multiple Choice and Hot Spots applications where they can learn about different letters of the alphabet."


HOW-TO VIDEOS FOR THE SMART TABLE


Adding background images from SMART Notebook using Windows XP


SMARTTable Toolkit: Adding background images from SMART Notebook using MAC OSX

3D Projectors in the Classroom: The kids are ready--but what about the textbook-bound curriculum?

Recently several companies have unveiled 3D DLP projector systems for use in K-12 settings.   Why 3D in the classroom?

To provide students with immersive learning experiences, according to information from a press release from Texas Instruments:
DLP Technology Enhances Interactive Learning by Demonstrating Industry's Only 3D-Enabled Single-Projector: "Immersive learning provided by 3D displays shown to increase test scores, close the gender gap and increase knowledge retention."

Here are a few quotes from the students who had a chance to try out a 3D learning experience in their classroom:

"I think it would really stay in your brain more, because you're having fun with it."
"It's really interactive and exciting"
"It lets you focus on the details of it."

Students usually don't give this sort of reaction when they are asked to open up a traditional textbook!
"Book work is boring. (With 3D) you get into it...and then you can play back that picture in your mind when you're taking a test" - Student, Rock Island, IL (track 3).


DLP Enables 3D in the Classroom at FETC (Promotional video)






RELATED:


The Classroom in 3D
THE Journal, February 2010
"In assessing the classroom potential of 3D, experts point to its capacity to enhance visualization. That could prove useful in classes such as geometry, in which the third dimension could illustrate complex spatial concepts, and biology, where 3D could be used for frog dissections or to show images of cells.  Subjects such as astronomy, history, geography, art history, and earth sciences would be enriched as well."

One barrier to the adoption of 3D technology in the classroom is the lack of appropriate 3D content.  According to the THE Journal article,  content providers working on 3D content include Safari Montage, BenQ, AVRover, Discovery Education, Promethean World, Eon Reality, and RM Educational Software.  Texas Instruments is involved with some of these companies.

3D Enabled Projectors
Texas Instruments (also see DLP Link & Active Glasses)
BenQ
Mitsubishi
Sharp
ViewSonic


SOMEWHAT RELATED:
Teachers Increasingly Value Media and Technology (pdf)
PBS and Grunwald Associates, LLC, 2009

Multimedia Storytelling; Brian Storm & Scott Strazzante (info via Innovative Interactivity)

Brian Storm, the founder and president of MediaStorm, recently was a presenter during UNC's Photo Night, an event that celebrates various forms of photo-journalism. Tracy Boyer, author of the Innovative Interactivity blog, recently posted about her experience attending the presentation and her chance to chat with Brian Storm over lunch.


Tracy's post provides a good overview of MediaStorm's business model, which has four main components - multiple platform publication, project-specific multimedia agency, an interactive production studio, and evangelism/training.  I think that MediaStorm's business model will hold well for the future, given the rapid changes in technology, journalism, and cross-platform interactive media. Despite the economic downturn, MediaStorm had their best year, according to Tracy.


Below is an example of what you'll find on the MediaStorm website:


Common Ground  (excerpt)
Photographer: Scott Strazzante

The full Common Ground project can be viewed at http://mediastorm.org/0023.htm


"On July 2, 2002, Jean and Harlow Cagwin watched as their home — the last remnant of their 118-acre cattle farm in Lockport, Illinois — was torn down clearing the way for a new housing development. Several years later, Ed and Amanda Grabenhofer and their four children moved into the new Willow Walk subdivision, their house just yards from where the Cagwin's home once stood.

Common Ground introduces us to the lives touched by this land, as photographer Scott Strazzante takes us on a visual journey exploring the differences and similarities of these two families while simultaneously asking us to look at what is common among us all."





What I liked about the videography and photography is how the photography juxtaposed similar pictures depicting the commonalities between the older couple who once lived on the farmland that was transformed into the suburban home for young families.


RELATED
ABOUT MEDIASTORM (from the MediaStorm website)

"Originally founded in 1994 at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, MediaStorm relaunched in March of 2005 with a focus on creating cinematic narratives for distribution across a variety of platforms.
In November 2005, MediaStorm premiered its award-winning multimedia publicationhttp://mediastorm.org. Utilizing animation, audio, video and the power of still photography, we publish diverse narratives that speak to the heart of the human condition.

MediaStorm is widely recognized for the quality editorial work we've produced for our many clients. We have created award-winning multimedia projects, interactive applications, and web sites for media companies, foundations and advocacy groups. Our clientele includes Starbucks, Council on Foreign Relations, and National Geographic Magazine. MediaStorm projects have also appeared on numerous websites including MSNBC, Slate, NPR and Reuters and have been broadcast on PBS..."

"MediaStorm is a multimedia production studio based in Brooklyn, New York and collaborating virtually with creative resources around the globe. MediaStorm's principal aim is to usher a new era of multimedia storytelling, via our  publication, our advanced workshops and our industry-leading production and consulting services. The people we hire and the culture that we have created for quality and innovation at MediaStorm are the keys to our success."

MediaStorm Founder Brian Storm advises journalism community to partner and collaborate
Tracy Boyer, Innovative Interactivity,  2/17/10
Bloggers: If you link to MediaStorm, be sure to send an email to info@mediastorm.org with your URL.


Some of my previous posts about multimedia/digital storytelling:
Visual Literacy and Multimedia Literacy Quotes
The Importance of Storytelling and Multimedia Content-Updated
Digital Storytelling Platforms and Multiple Perspectives: A look at the work of Jonathan Harris - food for thought for interactive timeline design.
Two Interesting Posts:  Colin Mulvany "Will the touch tablet save professional journalism?" & Michael Arrington -"The End of Hand Crafted Content"
Umajin Creative - Digital Storytelling for Interactive Whiteboard or Touch Screen- free demo available.
Resources for the (therapeutic) use of digital and multimedia storytelling & social stories for children and teens.

Johnny Holland on-line Magazine- some of my favorite posts.

If I had the time, I could spend several hours catching up with the on-line Johnny Holland Magazine.  Why?  It is full of stuff I like to think about.

"Johnny is an open collective talking, sharing, and finding answers about the interaction between people, products, systems or processes."

Here are a few of my favorite posts:

Learning from Games: A Language for Designing Emotion
Joe Lamantia, 8/3/2009

Lamantia's article discusses the thoughts of Nicole Lazzaro, a games researcher and design consultant, who suggests that there are four kinds of fun, as outlined in the chart below:
  --XEO Design Inc.

(The references for Lamantia's article are worth taking a look.)

Engaging the User: What We Can Learn from Games
Marc Sasinski, 8/31/09

When Data Gets Up Close and Personal
Stephen Anderson, 1/27/10

The Social Life of Visualization (4-part series by Jeremy Yuille and Hugh Macdonald)
The Social Life of Visualization, Part 2:  Creation Phase
The Social Life of Visualization, Part 3: Interpretation
The Social Life of Visualization, Part 4: The Capture Process

"Jeremy Yuille and Hugh Macdonald are interaction design researchers with ACID at RMIT University. They research the effects of social media on different industries, ranging from sport to finance."

The Future is Touchable
"Jeroen van Geel is founder of Johnny Holland and a senior interaction designer. He works part-time for Fabrique Communication & Design and the other part for his own clients."


Visit Johnny Holland Magazine to find out more about the "Johnnies" below:


:





(The "Johnnies" without pictures can be found on the Johnny Holland website.)