Using "tangibles" to promote novel forms of playful learning

Tangibles, in the form of physical artefacts that are electronically augmented and enhanced to trigger various digital events to happen, have the potential for providing innovative ways for children to play and learn, through novel forms of interacting and discovering. They offer, too, the scope for bringing playfulness back into learning. To this end, we designed an adventure game, where pairs of children have to discover as much as they can about a virtual imaginary creature called the Snark, through collaboratively interacting with a suite of tangibles. Underlying the design of the tangibles is a variety of transforms, which the children have to understand and reflect upon in order to make the Snark come alive and show itself in a variety of morphological and synaesthesic forms. The paper also reports on the findings of a study of the Snark game and discusses what it means to be engrossed in playful learning

The Industry and Policy Context for Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion:Market Analysis, Future Prospects and Key Challenges in Videogames, Serious Games and Gamification

The effective use of digital games for empowerment and social inclusion (DGEI) of people and communities at risk of exclusion will be shaped by, and may influence the development of a range of sectors that supply products, services, technology and research. The principal industries that would appear to be implicated are the 'videogames' industry, and an emerging 'serious games' industry. The videogames industry is an ecosystem of developers, publishers and other service providers drawn from the interactive media, software and broader ICT industry that services the mainstream leisure market in games, The 'serious games' industry is a rather fragmented and growing network of firms, users, research and policy makers from a variety of sectors. This emerging industry is are trying to develop knowledge, products, services and a market for the use of digital games, and products inspired by digital games, for a range of non-leisure applications. This report provides a summary of the state of play of these industries, their trajectories and the challenges they face. It also analyses the contribution they could make to exploiting digital games for empowerment and social inclusion. Finally, it explores existing policy towards activities in these industries and markets, and draws conclusions as to the future policy relevance of engaging with them to support innovation and uptake of effective digital game-based approaches to empowerment and social inclusion.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Spartan Daily, February 6, 2006

Volume 126, Issue 6https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10206/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, February 6, 2006

Volume 126, Issue 6https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10206/thumbnail.jp

Learning by gaming:ANT and critical making

Relationships among theory, gaming, learning and socio-technical design are explored in the two contributions which compose the section. The theory in question is ANT, re-interpreted through critical making - an umbrella term for various distinctive practices that link traditional scholarship in the humanities and social sciences to forms of material engagement. Sergio Minniti describes an ongoing project called Game of ANT, which draws upon the critical making approach to design an interactive technology and a workshop experience through which scholars and students can conceptually-materially engage with ANT, hence exploring and approaching it from novel points of view. Game of ANT adopts the Latourian vision of technoscience as war and physically embodies this idea by proposing a sort of war game during which participants play the roles of human or non-human actors engaging with the competitive dynamics of socio-technical life. The commentary by Stefano De Paoli proposes new directions to develop the project, by deepening the concept of game and its value for design and learning processes.</p

System upgrade: realising the vision for UK education

A report summarising the findings of the TEL programme in the wider context of technology-enhanced learning and offering recommendations for future strategy in the area was launched on 13th June at the House of Lords to a group of policymakers, technologists and practitioners chaired by Lord Knight. The report – a major outcome of the programme – is written by TEL director Professor Richard Noss and a team of experts in various fields of technology-enhanced learning. The report features the programme’s 12 recommendations for using technology-enhanced learning to upgrade UK education