Articles Posted in Games for Learning

Welcome Technology & Learning readers. My article Getting It Wrong – Slaying Myths About Video Games covers 5 misconceptions many teachers about video games and was published in two parts in September and October.

If you are interested in learning more in on the topic of games in the classroom here are two resources to help you.

John Rice’s Education Games Research is essential reading on the subject. John is a Technology Director for a School District here in Texas and has published research in this arena. He writes from a practitioner’s perspective but also with a good eye for research validation.

Do video games belong in the classroom?

Part 2 of the article I wrote for Technology & Learning Magazine is up on their website now.

The myths covered this month are:

Second Life in Education is a hot topic. In that vein EdNet had a strong panel that included folks from SRI, a Teacher who has been using it extensively in her school, and a representative from Second Life. This is the first of three articles on this presentation.

First off, I find it interesting that Second Life is getting most of the visibility in Education when other virtual worlds (Habbo Hotel, Whyville, etc.) are doing far more with K12 age kids and some have more intentionally educational content on them. Chalk it up to Second Life being a media darling and to good outreach from their Education team. If you are interested in this arena some of these other worlds merit a look.

SRI – An R&D Perspective

On-line games and virtual worlds were the theme at this year’s Austin Game Developers Conference (AGDC). This is the third of a few roundup articles about the conference with a focus on topics of interest to education and education publishers.

The parallels between how the web is changing the game industry and the world of education publishing are fascinating. Because of the inherent lag in the education market we can learn a lot from how gaming companies are adapting to the web’s incursion into their business.

Raph Koster – Designing for Everywhere

The panel on Managing Influencers at the Austin Game Developers Conference yesterday got me thinking about a frequently ignored aspect of the K12 publishing world – building and nurturing communities of key influencers around education products.

In education influencers are the people who speak at regional trade shows, who write blogs and podcasts, who participate in on-line forums, and who serve on state and national committees. We often rely on our Sales Reps and the Curriculum Consultants to handle this aspect of the business. But managing influencers is very different than maitaining good relationships with key customers and it is fundamentally a post sales responsibility.

“Managing key customers” is a transactional view – it is about the next sale. Reps will tell you that relationships are the key – and they are – but they are based on transactions. Influencers want a different kind of recognition – they want to be respected for their ideas not for their wallets. This means they need a different approach. As one of the speakers put it – “Marketing brings customers in – Community Management keeps them there.”