YouMedia @ Chicago Public Library

Innovation and Learning in Libraries

YouMedia is an innovative new learning space at Chicago’s Harold Washington Library designed to engage teens with library resources and connect them to the city’s educational and cultural communities through the use of digital technologies. YouMedia houses thousands of books, more than 100 laptop and desktop computers, and a variety of media creation tools and software that allow users to create and repurpose content from the web.  By working in teams and individually, students engage in projects that promote critical thinking, creativity, and skill-building.

Games and Literacy

From Library Journal:

“Games and literacy? That’s a stretch.” So said a school librarian last year when I broached the American Library Association’s (ALA) “Libraries, Literacy, and Gaming” initiative.

It’s a surprisingly common sentiment. Many consider games faddish, despite their proven longevity: board-game playing goes back to the dawn of time, miniatures wargaming starts with H.G. Wells’s Little Wars (1913), and console games have been around since the 1970s, the same time that role-playing games (RPGs) exploded. In the future, I expect, we won’t be asking ourselves “What were we thinking?” so much as “Why all the fuss about gaming in libraries?”

Games and literacy—which I’ll here define as the ability to read and write—go hand in hand.  more

Video Games for Learning and Assessment

See more about this video at Edutopia:

http://www.edutopia.org/no-gamer-left-behind

more about “Video Games for Learning and Assessment“, posted with vodpod

 

 

Summer games are an inexpensive, effective way to promote children’s learning

From Examiner.com:

Robert S. Siegler and Geetha B. Ramai (The Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, USA) published a special section: The Development Of Mathematical Cognition. In their work they state that “playing linear numerical board games promotes children’s numerical development.”

 

The study sites a group of children who played a simple number board game over two weeks showed significant improvement in counting, numeral recognition, and value estimation compared to children who played a different, non-numeral based game.

 

Fine tuning old standard games can be an inexpensive and effective way to promote your child’s learning this summer. The slide-show gives one example of taking an old standard game, Tic-Tac-Toe-a non-numeral-based game- and ratcheting it up, simply by replacing the X’s and O’s with numbers.

 

For Nintendo Fans check out brainage.com for information on Brain Age2; it is designed for the Nintendo DS handheld video game system, inspired by research into brain functions. Brain Age challenges players with simple math problems, scrambled words, and counting currency…I suggest it because it is very interactive software.

 

Make sure your little baseball fan is keeping statistics on their favorite player, or team; Let them be your “go to” person for current total of hits and runs.

 

Finally, remember all those board games, maybe you can borrow a few from Grandma’s closet!

Have Fun,

R.R.Cratty

Vassar campers learn game design

From the Poughkeepsie Journal, July 3, 2009:

While most 11-year-olds’ camp experience consists of kickball and arts and crafts, Witman creates video games.

Witman, a Union Vale native, is enrolled in “3D Game Design-Role Playing Games,” one of 14 week-long courses offered at Vassar College by iD Tech camps.  see more

New York Times: Role Playing at Warp Speed in a Galaxy Darwin Never Imagined

The New York Times reviews the new expansion pack for the hit computer game Spore. 

They say: “The strength of Galactic Adventures is in the rich pool of tools it gives players to create their own scenarios. The basic visual style is goofy and kid friendly, but there is nothing stopping you from creating an evocation of the infernal regions. Players can shape the landscape and place buildings and creatures.

For every creature the player can set up a hierarchy of behaviors like ‘mind your own business, but once a hostile creature gets close, make defending the nest your prime objective.’ Galactic Adventures’ strongest suit is how easily it explains how to create such behaviors and environments.” see more

MacArthur Foundation Awards $2 Million to Digital Media and Learning Projects

From DigitalOcean to an urban WildLab, see the MacArthur Foundation web site for Innovative projects being funded through their Digital Media and Learning initiative.

Innovation awards support projects that demonstrate new modes of participatory learning, in which people take part in virtual communities, share ideas, comment on one another’s projects, and advance goals together. Young Innovator awards — designed to encourage young people aged 18-25 to think boldly about “what comes next” in participatory learning and to contribute to making it happen — will aid recipients in bringing their most visionary ideas from the “garage” stage to implementation.

Game Design Programs

Want to host a game design program or build a collection of games to bolster a program you already host? Check out this article by Kristen Mastel and Dave Huston, from infotoday.com to see their excellent recommendations.

Video Game Genres

Think that all video games are the same?  Not so!  Here are the most popular categories of video game:

Action (such as Super Mario Bros.)

Action-Adventure (such as Legend of Zelda)

Adventure (such as King’s Quest)

Music (such as DDR)

Role-Playing (such as Final Fantasy)

Simulation (such as the ever-popular Sims)

Sports (such as Madden NFL)

Strategy (such as Civilization)

See Shawn McCann’s full article on this topic at School Library Journal

Games for Learning and Assessment

Computer simulations are natural learning tools for a generation of video game players.