One of the projects I’m working on at the moment is a website that will help primary school children (5-11s) with their art work. The audience for the resource is quite complicated because teachers are likely to be the standard bearers for it – they’ll be the ones that direct children to it (at least […]
Archive | Games
RSS feed for this sectionPlaything to Game
In an earlier post I wonder “What is a game?‘ It looked at the characteristics you can use to define a game. This week for a project I’m working on, I’ve been thinking about how you turn a normal activity into a game, the process of gamification. Jane McGonical is one of the most passionate […]
Challenge
I’ve written a couple of posts already about motivation (the motivation to learn and motivational momentum) but today I want to explore some of the issues associated with that powerful driver: challenge. The ability to overcome some conflict is central to the engagement of most narrative experiences. Similarly the level of challenge associated with any […]
What is a game?
Over the last couple of years, I’ve been doing some thinking about the nature of games for the BBC. With gamification the new hot idea and with it the attempt to apply game mechanics to just about every industry both online and real world, it felt like a good time to revisit the core concept of […]
Rewarding learning
My little girl was ‘Star of the Week’ at her school last week for ‘great number work.’ She was ecstatic to receive the recognition. And it’s a big encouragement to her to keep on trying. I’m very proud of her. Coincidentally but far more trivially, I went up a level in Modern Warfare 2. […]
Reflecting on gameplay
I lose a lot of games. In fact, on balance I almost certainly lose more times than I win. But I’m not going to let it get me down. Repeated failure in games demonstrates a number of important aspects of in-game learning. The fact that getting it wrong, often terminally, is an intrinsic part of […]
Page-turning isn’t learning
Electronic page turning is the bane of e-learning. The lazy tendency to translate traditional educational resources into the equivalent of online books undermines both the credibility and effectiveness of web-based learning because it ignores all the interactive potential of the medium. Pressing ‘Next’ to move on a screen is a dumb device to progress. It […]
Where games meet learning
In earlier posts, I’ve looked at the research evidence for and against the learning potential for games and how play in general relates to learning. This post looks at the overlap between games and learning. Although many people become quite aerated about definitions, for the sake of today’s note, I’m simply using ‘games’ to mean […]
New Year’s Revolution
I’m excited about this year. I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions but this year is something of a revolution because I have something better. A new business. A new opportunity. After years of working as an academic, for the BBC and a couple of great independent media companies, I have started my own […]
Where play meets learning
Play’ and ‘games’ are dirty words to many traditional educationalists because of their connotations of trivial, wasteful and indulgent activity. It might hark back to our WASP-ish philosophy that only hardship and suffering are good for the soul. Even the seminal play theorist, Johan Huizinga, argued that play is “an activity connected with no […]