Games in Schools report
The Games in Schools project in the European Union has just released Handbook for Teachers on how to use video games in the classroom. It is available in PDF format, and includes How Computer Games Help Children Learn as recommended additional reading.
The project also has a website and blog for those interested in learning more about their work, which includes another report on the current use of games in schools.
Former students of Urban Science make planning splash with proposal for a Central Park Airport
Just kidding.
A recent hoax, in which the Manhattan Airport Foundation proposed a new airport be built in Central Park, fooled both the Huffington Post and Inhabitat, a weblog about sustainable design.
If you can play this game, you’re hired
In recent interview a CEO makes the case (inadvertently, I am sure) for why epistemic games should not be used only in K-12 education.
Wendy Kopp of Teach for America describes a hiring process that sounds remarkably like an epistemic game:
If it seems like someone would be a fit here, based on that, then we’ll actually try to simulate the job…. I used to hire people and then realize within two days whether someone was going to thrive or not. So I said, “Let’s actually find out what we’re going to know two days in, before someone starts.” We just send them a bunch of stuff that they would get otherwise on their first day and say, “Here are the challenges of the day.” And we ask them to write up their answers, and then actually engage with them deeply so that we understand whether they have the skills that a particular role is going to require.
Web 2.0 has officially made it
You know Web 2.0 has gone mainstream when you see a spoof like Web Side Story, which sends up the major social networking sites to the tunes of West Side Story:
The problem with finches
In How Computer Games Help Children Learn I argue that innovation doesn’t mean just “thinking of something no one as thought of before.” Rather, innovation takes place within a social context–it is about learning to solve problems that don’t have routine answers as much as inventing things that are totally new.
A recent item in the news illustrates why:
