Ever so often I get asked what’s so great about games and learning using games. An answer I use just as often is that it’s all about ‘play’. In this video Dr. Jaak Panskepp talks about his research into play and its benefits. While in this context it doesn’t directly tie to eLearning, I felt this tiny video would be interesting to post to our blog. Take a look:
With 29 new posts, April has been the most active month on our blog. And we do realize that some of you would want to get a quick summary post at the end of the month that lists which ones were hot. So here’s the first of our monthly roundup posts that we intend to put up every month now.
We talked on various topics in April – from LMS to Augmented Reality, from Games to AS 3.0 Resources.
As games continue to establish themselves into our daily lives, the future as we know it will not be the same. They don’t just hold the power to influence our life, but also have great implications for Learning.
Below are a few interesting talks from TED’s past, focusing on games, which are sure to get you thinking.
I attended the two day conference on Game Based Learning held earlier this week in London. This was the second edition of the conference and had a decent 400+ delegate presence. There were some sponsors too and but very few stalls in the exhibit hall which was disguised as the experience lounge. Overall I was quite pleased to have attended the two day conference. Here are some of my impressions of the conference.
Over so often I get asked what fundamentals of game design apply to the design of learning games – a very difficult question to answer that. In my opinion, every sort of principle ever used in the design of commercial video games applies to the creation of digital learning games as well. My opinion is that game design can’t really be reduced to a set of guidelines that instructional designers can follow to design games that teach. I’d even go so far as to say that game design is more of a philosophy than anything else, once you imbibe that philosophy the gaminess starts to permeate all your design, it fundamentally changes the way you think about user interface and experience design.
Yes, we believe it can.
It’s been an interesting start of the week, with the tiny Regifting game going viral of sorts within our office. Hit the jump and you’ll see just why.
http://www.regiftable.com/regiftingrobinpopup.html
Soon after I posted These are Not Serious Games on the blog and as a discussion on Linked-In, there was a flurry of comments over a couple of days that quickly covered some thoughts about Serious Games.
