Interested in a job extending your EDTEC 670 skills with an almost unlimited budget? Here’s your opportunity. The Washington Times: CIA pursues video game: “The CIA is set to spend several million dollars to develop a video game aimed at helping its analysts think like terrorists, The Washington Times has learned.     The agency’s Counter Terrorist [...]

Here’s a very interesting article on The Impact of Digital Games on Education. A very good review of the use and benefits of digital games, their general acceptance in educational settings and stimulating thoughts about future research. You’ll find our elusive Prensky text referred to and quoted often. This article is from a peer-reviewed Internet [...]

http://www.gametheory.net/ An interesting compendium of game design and information and samples. There are lecture notes from game design lectures, textbook reviews, interactive samples and strategy games, as well as a dictionary of gaming terms. The site is the work of Mike Shor, an economics professor at Vanderbilt.

In search of fun and exciting games, I found a web site featuring a bunch of medical-related games, including “Gross Anatomy”. The one thing I like about this game is that it’s actually six games in one, and it appears to be very interactive. You can build a skeleton, challenge other players with blood and [...]

On this website called “virtual-architecture”, Judi Harris talked about using telecollaborative lessons as interpersonal exchange, information collection and analysis, and problem solving. Under the last category, over 10 websites are provided as examples of using telecollaborative lessons as simulations. The projects listed cover a variety of topics, such as news coverage of a trial, election, [...]

This article, posted at PressI.com, highlights a technology and education workshop at a recent Higher Education Leaders Symposium held on the Microsoft campus. The workshop “examined the ways in which games and lifelike simulations can create virtual worlds that teach real-life lessons.” “Technology allows us to take approaches that have never before been feasible. As [...]

Hasbro has just released a PDF that replicates the artwork of Monopoly money. Click here and print yourself a fortune.

I found some eGames on the web, go to: http://www.twitchspeed.com/site/news.html. Although some of the technology used to develop the games was interesting and I did get a chuckle out of a couple of the games, it was easy to get ahead in some of the games without reading the questions. I started to question the [...]

Here are a couple of sites that discuss ancient games. There are some good pictures at both sites, with rules and histories included. Most of the ancient games discussed appear to be race games, and they are still played in various forms today. There is something appealing about the simple, straightforward quality of not only [...]

Interesting article from BBC News about a PC game released this year called, Republic: The Revolution, based in part on the book, Crowds and Power, by Nobel Laureate Elias Canetti. The game combines elements of real-time strategy and simulation which adds another level of believability for the player and basically creates a new genre, according [...]

While trying another option to get the Prensky book, I got caught up in Marc Prensky’s website. He has an entire section devoted to URL’s and resources for game-based education, training, and e-learning. The first section is URL’s for game companies for those interested. The second section are links to projects and products. The remaining [...]

Brandon Hall has just released a comprehensive report (725 pages) on simulation products and services. You can download the 26 page executive summary free of charge. Who should read it? “This report is sure to be a must have for instructional designers, e-learning professionals, product purchasers, SMEs, and anyone else interested in how simulations are [...]

Students can simulate food chains and understand how they work with this simulation of a virtual lake. Food Chain was developed by High Performance Systems as a by product of their Systems Thinking software iThink and Stella. The company newsletter The Connector (published bi-monthly) has regular articles about introducing and teaching Systems Thinking in schools. [...]

Here’s an interesting interview with Clark Aldrich, author of the forthcoming book Simulations and the Future of Learning: “JM: What advice do you have for teachers who want to construct simulations for their on-campus or online classes? CA: To understand simulations, the first thing to do is get comfortable playing computer games. Try The Sims, [...]

I was on a business trip and found an article advertising business games for kids. The one that caught my eye was an Industrial Waste board game. The players are the owners/managers of companies that are competing in this new world where profit, innovation, and environment must be balanced to be considered successful. Not only [...]

While googling for game ideas, I came across this atypical one: The Yoga Garden Game. It is aimed at children learning yoga, but rather than have the players compete against each other, the focus is on mutual growth and enjoyment. It is typical race game, but it’s definitely “outside the box” in its emphasis on [...]

We are going to talk about Sivasailam Thiagarajan and his games later in our class. He’s an amazing person. Check this out: Workshops by Thiagi There are many “freebies” on this website. My friend has told me that you are gonna love this guy. Are you?

We are going to talk about Sivasailam Thiagarajan and his games later in our class. He’s an amazing person. Check this out: Workshops by Thiagi There are many “freebies” on this website. My friend has told me that you are gonna love this guy. Are you?

The University of Waterloo has been developing the Elliott Avedon Museum and Archive of Games Index Page since the very earliest days of the web. It contains a searchable collection of over 500 pages detailing games in the museum’s collection. A good source of ideas.

In this month’s issue of Educational Leadership there’s an interesting article titled Boredom and Its Opposite. “If, as research indicates and many teachers suspect, student achievement is more highly correlated with student interests than with cognitive ability, then we should make curriculum design based on human interests a primary focus for professional development during the [...]