Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

12.11.09 | Can Gaming Change Education?: There’s a comprehensive article at eSchool News on various studies on gaming and education.

“As video games continue to permeate our culture, schools and students are increasingly interested in using video games for learning,” writes associate editor Meris Stansbury. “This interest has prompted universities and neurologists to explore what makes a successful educational game, what the current barriers to adoption are, and how gaming as a whole affects the brain.”

The story covers reports produced by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, University of Rochester and University of Oregon

The MIT report, “Moving Learning Games Forward: Obstacles, Opportunities, and Openness” (PDF), was produced by the Education Arcade, a MIT research division that explores games that promote learning through play.

According to this report, writes Stansbury, “the process of designing and creating educational games can be much like the baking process.”

“There are many attempts by a growing number of health-conscious cooks to make things that are both yummy and healthy. It isn’t easy to balance these two qualities ... and there is likely no universal solution,” the report says. “Some recipes work really well for some groups of people, in certain contexts, with certain expectations. Similarly, in creating experiences that are both fun and filled with learning, the success of different recipes, such as mixing media, immersion, game styles, learning goals, and mixtures of content, depends quite a bit on the audience, context, content, goals and facilitation.”

Plus: Over at DMLCentral, Liz Losh discusses real-world politics and virtual games. Losh is writing director of the Humanities Core Course at University of California, Irvine, and author of “Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes” (MIT Press, 2009).

And check out Spotlight’s recent Behind the Research series on gaming in the classroom, including a story about the popular “Quest Atlantis.”

Education in the Digital Age: PBS recently hosted a webinar for educators on “Education in the Digital Age.” If you missed it, the full webinar is available online (view the archive here).

During the session, Steve Hargadon of Classroom 2.0 interviews PBS producer and director Rachel Dretzin about her work on PBS FRONTLINE: Digital Nation, Life on the Digital Frontier, a year-long, multi-platform project exploring the impact of the web and digital media on life in the 21st century. The webinar also features a brief tour of the Digital Nation website, including several online videos on how the internet and technology are changing cultures, reshaping workplaces and creating new approaches to the way we solve problems. 

Making a World of Difference: For its 2009 annual conference, the National Middle School Association invited students to submit videos showcasing how they are making a world of difference in their communities and beyond. The four winners’ videos are available here.

We confess we may be partial to the video by Summit School in Winston, S.C. Not only does it open with a spotlight that looks much like ours, but the video about using technology for learning closes with the message: “Here at Summit School, we are gaining the independence and confidence we need to succeed in the 21st century. The use of technology in the classroom, studios and on the web is truly ‘Making a World of Difference.’”

Students in Toronto didn’t display technology at their school—in fact, they left school behind. During spring break, the Canadian teenagers delivered eight solar-powered OLPC’s (One Laptop per Child) to students at a secondary school in northern Kenya—and figured out how to provide wi-fi access, too. Watch this well-produced report about the experience.