Gamestar Mechanic is now available. Gamestar Mechanic is a game that you play that teaches you how to design video games. Designed for 4th – 9th grade students, and intended to teach systems thinking, iterative design and collaborative skills, Gamestar Mechanic is lots of fun. You can check it out on their website, or download the teacher’s guide, and the press release right here from our website. And then let us know what you think!
Immune Attack 2.0 is being developed with funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The NIAID funds research in everything from basic viral replication mechanisms to innovative AIDS treatments, from basic
To read more about the NIAID and their work, you can download their PDF, or see their website. Today, the NIAID published a report on the educational programs the fund. And that includes, of course, Immune Attack 2.0. So, go read the report on all the great innovative work the NIAID is sponsoring for educating the next generation of Scientists!
Here is a current article that talks about the different benefits of playing video games.
If you’re interested in the subject I found a great paper from 2005 about Learning Games.
The Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab members David Williamson Shaffer, Richard Halverson, Kurt R. Squire, and James P. Gee wrote an amazing paper about how video games may be the future of learning. They discuss how video games can teach us so much more than how to use a gun. They discuss how video games can teach a 14 year old politics, a normal person complex modeling, and help kids with cancer take better care of themselves. To find the paper use this link and scroll down to Joint Papers and find the working paper titled “Before every child is left behind: How epistemic games can solve the coming crisis in education.”
Don’t forget the FAS National Summit on Educational Games Report. The summit brought together more than one hundred experts to examine how to harness the power of video games for learning. This report is widely cited and contains a collection of the reasons in favor of using games and simulations in education as well the issues that need to be addressed if industry and education are to be able to collaborate on learning games.