Category Thoughts

Gaming innovations of the decade

I thought I would round off the year (and the decade) with some thoughts about how gaming has changed in the past ten years, and how these advances in gaming could inform learning. So, I present my Top Five gaming…

Just my imagination

I was recently watching one of James May’s excellent television programmes about childhood toys. in which he reminisces and/or uses them to build something incredible and very cool, when he said something that got me thinking. I can’t remember his…

Learning about play

Thanks to Katie Piatt for a recent inspiring blog post on  play in relation to student’s learning. She considers how Eberle’s process of play (described by Johan Brand) could be applied to the design of student learning experiences. The process…

Assessing the educational value of games

This article, published recently, provides a detailed and comprehensive method for evaluating the educational value of computer games. The authors propose 74 indices on which educational value could be measured, broken down into seven categories of educational value: mentality change…

Alternate reality reading

I’ve just finished reading Mr Toppit, by Charles Elton. The plot centres around the family of an author, who wrote a set of children’s books in the 1980s (The Hayseed Chronicles). While this a pretty good holiday-reading-type novel, what really…

Looking at the evidence

There have been a number of studies recently that have added to the body of evidence for the effectiveness of educational games, in a variety of different areas. Simulators used to train surgeons can make them ‘quicker and better’. Action…