Universities and Schools
This page is a sub-section from the Leaders and Innovators page. Click here to return to the main page.
Everything is listed alphabetically. If you would like your school or university posted here, please send me an e-mail with a short description about your site and mission. If you see your school or university here and want to change or edit my blurb, please send me an e-mail with the corrections.
Everything is listed alphabetically. If you would like your school or university posted here, please send me an e-mail with a short description about your site and mission. If you see your school or university here and want to change or edit my blurb, please send me an e-mail with the corrections.
Collegeology
At the University of Southern California, a few games are being developed for college preparation in the Collegeology program. According to their website, "Our mission at Collegeology Games is to develop, operate, and evaluate a suite of fun, inspiring, and educational games that will increase the number of low-income youth preparing for, applying to, and finding success in the nation’s 4-year college programs. Our suite of games is a research-based and highly innovative effort to ensure postsecondary educational opportunities for low-income high-school students.” You can watch their video here.
For example, “Mission: Admission is a Facebook game designed to help high school students understand the strategies and skills needed to apply to college.” In Mission Admission, you play as a student applying to a school. You can sort what classes and extracurricular activities to take, and the game helps you with basic concepts like letters of recommendation that students may be unfamiliar with if their parents did not go to college.
At the University of Southern California, a few games are being developed for college preparation in the Collegeology program. According to their website, "Our mission at Collegeology Games is to develop, operate, and evaluate a suite of fun, inspiring, and educational games that will increase the number of low-income youth preparing for, applying to, and finding success in the nation’s 4-year college programs. Our suite of games is a research-based and highly innovative effort to ensure postsecondary educational opportunities for low-income high-school students.” You can watch their video here.
For example, “Mission: Admission is a Facebook game designed to help high school students understand the strategies and skills needed to apply to college.” In Mission Admission, you play as a student applying to a school. You can sort what classes and extracurricular activities to take, and the game helps you with basic concepts like letters of recommendation that students may be unfamiliar with if their parents did not go to college.
MIT’s Education Arcade
Words cannot describe how much the Education Arcade assisted me during my research. I went through all of their papers and games and let me tell you, their writing is never dry or dense. If you are seriously considering researching games and education, I recommend you go here as your first stop, starting with their latest paper. You will find familiar names in their staff section, including Kurt Squire, Henry Jenkins, and James Paul Gee. If you are looking for good research articles or books to read, I highly recommend starting with those three authors.
Words cannot describe how much the Education Arcade assisted me during my research. I went through all of their papers and games and let me tell you, their writing is never dry or dense. If you are seriously considering researching games and education, I recommend you go here as your first stop, starting with their latest paper. You will find familiar names in their staff section, including Kurt Squire, Henry Jenkins, and James Paul Gee. If you are looking for good research articles or books to read, I highly recommend starting with those three authors.
Quest to Learn
Quest to Learn, put very simply, is a school based around game mechanics. It was started by a very well-known game designer, Karen Salen, and features collaboration between teachers and game designers. It is a school for learning by doing and heavy emphasis in technology literacy. I would recommend exploring their site before making judgments because the concept is very unique. As I'm sure you find this very interesting or bizarre, I've included a YouTube video below.
As expressed on their site, “Mission critical at Quest is a translation of the underlying form of games into a powerful pedagogical model for its 6-12th graders. Games work as rule-based learning systems, creating worlds in which players actively participate, use strategic thinking to make choices, solve complex problems, seek content knowledge, receive constant feedback, and consider the point of view of others. As is the case with many of the games played by young people today, Quest is designed to enable students to “take on” the identities and behaviors of explorers, mathematicians, historians, writers, and evolutionary biologists as they work through a dynamic, challenge-based curriculum with content-rich questing to learn at its core.”
Quest to Learn, put very simply, is a school based around game mechanics. It was started by a very well-known game designer, Karen Salen, and features collaboration between teachers and game designers. It is a school for learning by doing and heavy emphasis in technology literacy. I would recommend exploring their site before making judgments because the concept is very unique. As I'm sure you find this very interesting or bizarre, I've included a YouTube video below.
As expressed on their site, “Mission critical at Quest is a translation of the underlying form of games into a powerful pedagogical model for its 6-12th graders. Games work as rule-based learning systems, creating worlds in which players actively participate, use strategic thinking to make choices, solve complex problems, seek content knowledge, receive constant feedback, and consider the point of view of others. As is the case with many of the games played by young people today, Quest is designed to enable students to “take on” the identities and behaviors of explorers, mathematicians, historians, writers, and evolutionary biologists as they work through a dynamic, challenge-based curriculum with content-rich questing to learn at its core.”
Playmaker
Playmaker is a school developed by the nonprofit, GameDesk. It is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and AT&T. The students make character sheets the first day of class that represents their skills and knowledge (probably known as resumes to most people) and then use a map modeled off of The Legend of Zelda to chart their school journey. The travel from the Emerald Forest of Media Arts to the Cave of Physics. The school features a learning laboratory called the Learning Center which is a classroom of the future with plenty of digital tools to explore. The school also has an interesting STEM curriculum with epistemic tools like Mathmaker where students can take on the role of engineers. The school will open on September 7th 2012, with 60 students in 6th grade.