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Showing posts from April, 2014

GALA 2014: Deadline For Serious Games Paper Submissions Extended

The GALA Conference will be held this year at the Palace of the National Military Circle, in Bucharest from July 2nd-4th, 2014 Organizers of the Games and Learning Alliance conference (GALA 2014) have just announced that the deadline for paper submissions was extended to May 9 th . They are seeking original contributions that advance the state of the art in the technologies and knowledge available to support development and deployment of Serious Games. Experimental studies are strongly encouraged (Please refer also to the "Aims and scope") The conference aims at bringing together researchers, developers, practitioners and stakeholders to share the state of the art and future of Serious Games Research & Market. The conference also includes an exhibition, where developers can showcase their latest products. GALA 2014 is an event organized by Carol I National Defense University and the  University of Genova , and sponsored by the Games and Learning Alli

Serious Games Turning Classrooms Into Countries

Via: Edutopia - Civic Mirror: Simulated Nation Building for Middle Schoolers The Civic Mirror is a game-based social studies program that turns classrooms into countries and students into citizens, allowing students to experiment with the social studies course content. It provides students with a voice and brings the curriculum to life by turning them into citizens of their own country. According to the website , the program is ideally suited for middle school and high school social studies courses that focus on political, legal, economic, and social issues and dilemmas. The Civic Mirror announced last February that they have exciting plans in store for CM World: the space where teachers and students can see what’s going on in other simulated countries (meaning other classes of students). In preparation for that, they have developed and recently released features that make it easier for countries to create and broadcast their national identities.   At the pre-game

Serious Games As An Alternative To Traditional Depression Treatments

Litesprite is one of the winners of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s recent competition – Games To Generate Data Challenge, with SinaSprite , a mobile Serious Game that targets women ages 25-50 with high stress levels of anxiety or depression. In the game, players help Socks the Fox become a Zen Master. Players categorize their daily concerns and entrust Socks to “hold” their concerns while also engaging in other activities or mini-games.  As players help Socks the Fox deal with certain challenges, gameplay lets adults practice coping mechanisms that they can apply to other life situations. Evidence-based treatment methods are embedded into the gameplay so players learn healthy habits while simultaneously achieving the desired behavior change. Players’ progress can be monitored by clinicians and caregivers: through gameplay, an activity log (patient registry) is created with contextual gameplay metrics that, in combination with the player-reported data (specific stressors, s

2014 (Serious) Games For Change Award Winners Announced

The Annual Games for Change Awards ceremony took place on April 23, as part of the 11 th Games for Change Festival Narrowed down from a field of over 140 titles, eight finalists competed for the winning prize across three categories: Most Innovative, Most Significant Impact, and Best Gameplay and one was named Game of the Year , as the game that best represents all three categories. Here are the 2014 Games for Change Award Winners: Game of the Year:   Gone Home , by Fullbright Company, covered on my prior post  Serious Games Replacing High School English Books . Most Innovative and Best Gameplay:   Papers Please , by Lucas Pope Papers, Please   is a puzzle Serious Game developed by indie game developer Lucas Pope, focusing on the emotional toll of working as an immigration officer, deciding who to let in and who to exclude from entering the fictional dystopian country of Arstotzka. Have a taste of it at  https://youtu.be/_QP5X6fcukM . Most Sign

ELA Serious Games Infused With Stealth STEM Content

As anticipated on my prior post GlassLab To Launch New Serious Game Created With NASA at G4C Festival , GlassLab Games launched a new game with NASA , Mars Generation One: Argubot Academy , yesterday at the Games for Change Festival Mars Generation One: Argubot Academy is a new tablet-based "Serious Game" for middle school students, developed in collaboration with NASA and experts in literacy at the National Writing Project. Designed for English Language Arts (ELA) education, Argubot Academy   introduces norms for classroom discussions, persuasive writing, and expository writing while also promoting interest in STEM competencies. The futuristic adventure game uses NASA’s expertise in robotics, planetary science and the possibility of life on Mars to develop critical thinking skills that are essential for STEM careers. The game transports students to Mars in the year 2054, where they will live among people in the planet’s first city, and learn how to be an informe

Serious Games Involve Young Citizens In Public Space Design

Block by Block is taking part in  Aldea Digital  (digital inclusion festival in Mexico City). So far over 200 kids have redesigned the Plaza Tlaxcoaque in Minecraft. The three winners will be presented on Sunday 27 April.  The Block byBlock project will be showcased this week at the 11 th Annual Games for Change Festival . Block by Block is an innovative partnership between the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat), the UN agency promoting sustainable towns and cities, and Mojang , the makers of Minecraft. According to Pontus Westerberg, Digital Project Manager for UN Habitat, the program originally started to get people aged 14-25 involved in planning projects in their communities. Minecraft has turned out to be the perfect tool to facilitate this process. Block by Block aims to involve youth in the planning process of urban areas by giving them the opportunity to show planners and decision makers how they would like to see their cities in the

11th (Serious) Games for Change Festival Starts Tomorrow As Part Of TFF

NYC’s Largest Gaming Festival to Take Place April 22-24 Games for Change Public Arcade on April 26 The 2014 Games for Change Festival starts tomorrow with three days of stellar speakers and panels, and game demos, followed by a full day of fun on the streets of lower Manhattan. The 11th Annual  Games for Change Festival  will take place in conjunction with the 2014 Tribeca Film Festiva l presented by AT&T. The Games for Change Festival , hosted and created by the non-profit Games for Change , seeks to unite leading international game creators with others who believe in the positive social impact of digital games.  Craig Hatkoff, founder of the film festival, said the collaboration will allow audiences, filmmakers and industry executives to interact with a new form of storytelling. Of particular interest to Tribeca Film Festival officials was the idea that gaming had grown beyond entertainment. Since it was founded in 2004, Games for Change has helped create and

Serious Games Take ELA Learning To New Heights

Several companies are set to release school curricula designed entirely on digital platforms for tablets, replacing all printed materials.  Education companies such as Amplify , McGraw Hill and Scholastic are among the first to heavily invest in an all-digital English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum for middle school. Amplify’s entry into the Serious Game Market was announced mid last year, as a “groundbreaking line-up of Educational Games focused on English Language Arts (ELA) and STEM, developed in collaboration with leading independent game designers from across the globe and designed to help students achieve core educational goals.” The games, which have been piloted in schools across the country, are playable on iPad, Chromebook or Amplify tablet. School districts may purchase the games this year, either bundled with Amplify’s Digital Curriculum or separately, for classroom deployment at the start of the 2014-15 school year.  Lexica , Amplify’s premier English La

Serious Games To Learn About A Biologically Diverse Ecosystem

TyrAnt , by  Preloaded , is one of the three "Serious Games" nominated in 2014 for the  Games for Change   Best Gameplay  award   category.  Gone Home  and  Papers, Please  are the other two nominees. The winning games will be announced on April 23 at the 11th Anniversary Games for Change Festival. Preloaded has been working with Amplify to produce a series of games to be sold to schools across the United States, designed for the Amplify Tablet and a variety of other platforms including iOS. Amplify is a US-focused educational publisher reimagining the way teachers teach and students learn. At the heart of this ambition is a groundbreaking digital curriculum for K-12, focusing on Science, Math and English Language Arts (ELA).  As part of their focus on Science they have developed TyrAnt , a light, Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game where the player seeks to protect and grow a colony of ants. The game is based on the US Life Sciences curriculum, touching a broad range

Serious Games Targeting Core Deficit Social Skill Areas

Late March, 2014 The Social Express™ , developed by The Language Express Inc. , received a 2014 ON for Learning Award from Common Sense Media, the national nonprofit dedicated to helping kids thrive with media and technology. The Social Express™ Serious Game is an online, interactive social skills learning program, targeting core deficit social skill areas that stand in the way of school and life success for children and young adults with social learning challenges.  The Social Express™  is based on best practices and programs that feature cognitive behavioral techniques and visual strategies, including Social Stories (Gray, 2002), Comic Strip Conversations (Gray ,1994), the Alert Program(r) (Williams & Shellenberger, 1996), The Incredible 5 Point Scale (Buron & Curtis, 2003), and The Hidden Curriculum (Myles, Trautman and Schelvan, 2004). Some of the core concepts presented are based on the work of Michelle Garcia Winner and her Social Thinking® curriculum.

Serious Games Transforming Health Through Challenging Conversations

Start The Talk , by Kognito , is an Educational, Role-Playing, Online Serious Game to help players learn the do’s and don’ts of talking to kids about underage drinking. It is one of Games for Change 2014 award nominees, in the Most Significant Impact c ategory. Start The Talk Serious Game is part of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) underage drinking prevention PSA campaign “Talk. They Hear You.”, launched in May 2013. The campaign is intended to help parents and caregivers start talking to their children early—as early as nine years old—about the dangers of alcohol, before they become teenagers. In the game, players have the opportunity to develop conversational strategies to approach, educate and build trust with their own kids about drinking. Players are presented with options on how to engage in the conversation as the avatar mom and her son, Michael. His responses are realistic and supported by thorough psychological studies, all

GlassLab To Launch New Serious Game Created With NASA at G4C Festival

On the first day of the upcoming 11 th Annual Games For Change Festival , to be held in New York from April 22-24 and 26, Games, Learning, and Assessment Lab (GlassLab) leaders will take the stage to share the Lab’s unique collaboration model to accelerate the research, development and distribution of high-quality Educational Serious Games, in the talk Collaborating for Change. One of GlassLab ’s most recent collaborators is NASA . GlassLab will take this opportunity to officially announce and launch the Lab’s second "Serious Game", as a much-anticipated follow up to  SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! released in November 2013: a tablet game created in collaboration with NASA . According to the Fast Company website , the new "Serious Game" with the working title Heroes is set on a Mars colony, and tests students' mastery of the elements of argumentation, including claims, evidence and reasoning. GlassLab would also be in final talks with a f

Serious Games Introducing Students To College Application Process

Via: USC Interactive Media & Games FutureBound (formerly known as Collegeology Games) is a research-based suite of Serious Games designed to introduce middle school and high school students to college application process and access to higher education. FutureBound was founded at the University of Southern California (USC), through a partnership between the Pullias Center for Higher Education and the Game Innovation Lab. Through their work at USC with students in a face-to-face mentoring program, they understood that many qualified students high school students, particularly in underserved areas, were not getting the kind of college counseling they needed.  These were students who had done well in school, had met college requirements, but who lacked the support and knowledge to successfully complete the college preparation and application processes. Tracy Fullerton, the director of the Game Innovation Lab, told The Journal, a publication dedicated to K-12 educa

Serious Games Encouraging Responsible Behaviors In Energy Consumption

The Serious Game 2020 Energy , by French multimedia studio Tralalere , was designed within the framework of ENERGY BITS, a European cross-media awareness program for teenagers (12-17 years old) financed by the Intelligent Energy Europe program, and that campaigns on sustainable energy use. ENERGY BITS encourage more responsible and efficient behaviors in energy consumption and promote renewable energies. It involves 13 partners from 9 countries in Europe and beyond. The game comprises 9 missions under three themes: energy saving, energy efficiency and renewable energies, and three levels: individual, local, and global.  Game Context For more than a century people have been using and depleting energy resources carefree, as if they were endless. In 2020 the world could find itself in a deadlock. The player has the power to go back in time and to rewrite history.  The player’s objective: to reduce the consumption of energy, increase energy efficiency and choose