Online Blogucation

Why couldn’t teachers create games for their students with the students having no idea they were playing? I started by creating a list of learning objectives in my class. Each starting letter of the list was a corresponding letter of my personal website. To my surprise, several students found it, went to my site, and got a small bit of extra credit! So, I started trying other things. I placed “hot spots” on my pages – white text that blended into the background – the when rolled over sent students to a YouTube video. Some students found it. Meanwhile, other students found a puzzle that I created and, upon solving it, found their way to a wiki. There were 4 sets of students working the game from different angles and they didn’t realize it until they were well into the game. But here’s the cool part…the game was all about the educational stuff I was teaching normally!

“Games have moved beyond ‘edutainment’ into complex topics that require higher-order thinking.”
– Brandon Hall, Chief Learning Officer

 
According to http://screentime.org the average American watches 4 hours and 35 minutes of television every day.  The same organization cites a study saying 1 in 4 children under the age of 2 have a television in their rooms.  In [...]

Do you want to play a game?  These words have been uttered in several movies to varying degrees of audienCe fright and delight.  From Joshua in War Games to Saw, as a (human) race, we seem fascinated by games.  Board games, basketball games, the Olympic games, head games, miNd games, digital games, children’s games, and [...]