June 2011 Blog Entries

Vanished at Games+Learning+Society; Pyramid Squashing

Submitted by datennes on June 27, 2011

A couple weeks ago, Caitlin and I gave our first talk about the experience we had with Vanished at Games+Learning+Society. While we had previously talked about Vanished at Sandbox Summit, this was the first talk since Vanished concluded. At Sandbox Summit we had not yet had the opportunity to see the entire saga play out.
 
Our talk was cut short due to time restrictions (and my own tendency to be verbose), but I’d like to share the slide deck here. Over the next few weeks I’ll provide a recap what was said during the talk and cover some of the material that we didn’t have time to get around to live.
 

Games For Change

Submitted by jhaas on June 26, 2011

 Over the past few weeks, the STEP team has been all over, hitting the Games+Learning+Society conference and Games For Change. While at Games For Change, I was asked to write a guest blogpost, which never made it to their blog. Never one to waste a piece of writing, here is my reaction to their panel on Games in Cultural Spaces:
GAMES IN CULTURAL SPACES

Tracy Fullerton - USC EA Game Innovation Lab 

The MIT Meta Game Card Exchange

Submitted by datennes on June 24, 2011

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend my first Games+Learning+Society conference in Madison Wisconsin. The conference was a wonderful event and I met many interesting people and attended talks and sessions which introduced me to a wide range of things taking place in the educational games landscape.
 
But, I’m not going to be writing about all that.
 

UbiqBio in Education Week

Submitted by jsheldon on June 17, 2011

...the mobile format appeals to students, says Lichtenstein.
They can play whenever, wherever,” she says. “This particular game doesn’t require long stretches of concentration, and that works for the mobile setting.”
 
That's a quote from a recent Education Week article featuring some coverage of UbiqBio games.

Revised and added: Paintball tutorial

Submitted by wh1 on June 16, 2011

The paintball tutorial was on the old SLTNG website and has now been revised for StarLogo TNG 1.5 and reposted as an intermediate tutorial. This is a step-by-step tutorial for programming a game and illustrates in general some features of SLTNG that make it particularly suitable for making games.

Vanished Concludes

Submitted by datennes on June 06, 2011

Vanished, our science mystery Curated Game, concluded on May 22. Over the seven weeks of game play, more than six thousand middle school students across the country worked together online to solve a large and complex mystery. They played games online, collected data in their communities, visited Smithsonian-affiliate museums, videoconferenced with scientists, and engaged in intelligent collaboration and debate online to bring the pieces of the puzzle together.
On behalf of the Vanished team, thank you to everyone involved for making this such a success.
Over the summer, we're going to be documenting the making of Vanished and posting some of the highlights here. Topics will range from game design and pedagogy to some of the technical details of making the Flash games. Our hope is that Vanished will not be the only game of this type and that others will be inspired to build upon this work and create similar educational experiences for kids.