July 2007

MacArthur Funds Game-Centered School in NYC

As part of its larger effort to explore the impact of technology on how kids learn, the MacArthur Foundation has announced a $1.1 million grant to help develop a New York City school that will use "game-inspired methods" to teach literacy and other subjects to students in grades 6-12.

The new middle/high school will be a public school and it's being created by two New York nonprofits, the Gamelab Institute of Play and New Visions for Public Schools. The groups are working with other educators, game designers and literacy experts to ensure that the school will indeed teach by using concepts like "gaming literacy" while its curriculum meets New York City's graduation standards. According to New Visions president Robert Hughes, the goal of the project is to "re-imagine the traditional school from top to bottom." And he expects that by using games as the center of the learning in the school, the educators will offer students better preparation for both college and their future careers.

Adds Gamelab executive director Katie Salen, "We are conceiving the school as a dynamic learning system that takes its cues from the way games are designed, shared and played. All players in the school - teachers, students, parents and administrators - will be empowered to innovate using 21st century literacies that are native to games and design."

You can learn more about the school and the role "gaming literacy" might play in the future of education by listening to this recent "All Things Considered" report: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11259040.

 

Teachers Get Their Own Tube

With the amazing, ongoing success of YouTube, it was only a matter of time before teachers got their own version of that video-sharing website. And now it's here. It's called TeacherTube and it was created by a long-time educator, Jason Smith.

The goal of the site, according to Smith, is to "provide an online community for sharing instructional videos," and after only a few months in operation, the site is already doing just that. Educators have posted thousands of videos broken up into "channels" relating to academic subjects like science, writing and math and to other teacher-friendly topics like professional development and technology education. And TeacherTube provides video tutorials that help make it easy for all educators (even "newbies") to upload and share videos at the site.

As is the case at YouTube, TeacherTube offers users the chance to rate videos, leave comments and to connect with others who have similar interests by joining or creating their own video groups. TeacherTube, again like YouTube, is completely free for its users. Smith says that TeacherTube distinguishes itself from its predecessor, however, by seeking to "fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools and home learners."

At this point, many of the videos at TeacherTube are of fairly limited technical quality, but it likely won't be long before the site starts spawning its own mini-Spielbergs! You can check it out for yourself at http://www.teachertube.com/index.php.

 

Follow up… Intel Joins Forces with the $100 Laptop

There has been a major development in the $100 Laptop program, also known as One Laptop per Child (OLPC), which we wrote about in last September's In the News.

OLPC's goal, as per our previous article, is to put ultra-cheap, intuitive and really revolutionary new laptops in the hands of children in developing countries around the world. Until recently, chip-making giant Intel had positioned itself as a competitor to OLPC, with plans to sell its own very cheap ($225) laptops to some of the same countries targeted by OLPC. Now Intel and OLPC are joining forces to work together on research and distribution for both of the laptops they're creating. And this can only be good news for the kids who are eventually going to get those laptops....

You can learn more about this story here: (http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstoryts.cfm?Articleid=7257).

 

And one more thing… Nicole Kidman, Meet Super Mario!

And in yet another sign of the "mainstreaming" of digital games, Nintendo has signed Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman to appear in a series of European television ads for Nintendo's "Brain Training" game. Like an increasing number of Nintendo's products, "Brain Training" is designed not for hard-core gamers, but for an older audience of relatively "casual" gamers. Nintendo's choice of Kidman as a spokesperson seems to signal that it will continue targeting this burgeoning market. Watch the commercial and see what you think - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA_r9FUEgAA.

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