Educational Gaming Commons - Press Start

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently posted a video about a very cool 3D snowball fight game created by Carnegie-Mellon University students. Check it out - very nice work by these folks.

Not Education in Jeopardy - another topic that is continuously debated in the US!

This is in reference to a recent blog post about the game Jeopardy at

http://www.hastac.org/blogs/etussey/pre-digital-edutainment-jeopardy-cla...

It's a short read - well worth the five minutes you'll spend to read it. Things that stick out for me:

• The Jeopardy game is an accepted cultural norm.
• The game can be used as a springboard for social discourse, part of a good learning experience.
• The producers of the game show have a classroom version of Jeopardy that includes authoring software and hardware used to produce a delux experience. See http://www.classroomjeopardy.com/index.aspx .

What other good things arise when we use a "standard" game like this for educational purposes?

BTW - The EGC has a version of the game, named Peril! Check it out.

Faculty are invited to attend a workshop on the educational benefits of the online virtual world Second Life on November 12 from 1:30-4:30 p.m. The workshop will take place in the Educational Gaming Commons Lab in 6A Findlay Commons at the East Halls, University Park, and will be facilitated by the Educational Gaming Commons staff and Shannon Ritter of Penn State Outreach.

Virtual worlds are 3-D, online, persistent spaces created and evolved by their users. The virtual world Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/) offers tremendous potential for research and teaching. Within this vast and rapidly expanding place, you can do, create, or become just about anything you can imagine.

Virtual worlds provide many educational benefits. The two strongest benefits may be an immersive problem-solving environment coupled with social interactions. For example, at Penn State, Second Life is used for teaching Spanish, as a meeting spot for World Campus online and distance education students, and more. The Penn State Educational Gaming Commons hosts space in Second Life for educators.

This workshop will first introduce you to the basics of Second Life, including how to acquire a free account and to navigate within the world. The second part of the workshop will demonstrate discipline-specific uses of Second Life to spark your imagination on potential uses of this environment.

Space is limited to a maximum of 12 people. To register, complete the online form at http://tinyurl.com/EGCSLWorkshop. The form will ask you to indicate your academic discipline as well as which aspects of Second Life you would be most interested in seeing during the workshop. If you have any questions, e-mail gaming@psu.edu. The workshop is sponsored by the Educational Gaming Commons, a service of Information Technology Services.

Many of you may have heard about the EGC's work with Ann Clements and Tom Cody (Music Education), who were interested in looking at ways to bring the commercially successful game Guitar Hero into the music classroom.  The Guitar Hero project is currently being run for the second semester and is enjoying great success.  However, beginning next week, we're excited to share that the project will be taking its next step.

Though using Guitar Hero in the classroom can provide a number of benefits to music students, at the core of Ann and Tom's efforts has always been the goal of teaching Music Education majors (who will themselves, become the next music teachers) how games like Guitar Hero can be used to inspire the next generation of music students.  As a part of the project, MusicEd students have been asked to create customized songs in Guitar Hero World Tour's music studio - songs, which, based on their own experience learning to play guitar, could help younger students bridge the gap between playing a game and learning to play a real instrument.  Over the next two weeks, those MusicEd students will have an opportunity to put their efforts to the test, as they visit several music classes at Mt. Nittany Middle School and work directly with middle schoolers using the custom tracks they have created.

Be sure to check back next week - we can't wait to share how things go!

See http://www.personal.psu.edu/bxb11/blogs/brett_bixler_e-portfolio/2009/10...

Have you heard about EGC Works? It's a new offering from the EGC. Every several weeks, our "Mr. Podcaster" Jamie Oberdick interviews a PSU faculty member that has worked or is working with the EGC. These 10 minute interludes are a great way to catch up with the EGC during a walk, the drive home, or time at the gym. Check them out!

EGC Works Podcasts

Podcast #1:  Ecoracer Game Accelerates Learning in Penn State Engineering Course

Peter Idowu, Electrical Engineering at Penn State Harrisburg

Podcast #2: Guitar Hero Enhances Learning in Music Education Course

Ann Clements, School of Music, Penn State University Park

Podcast #3: A Virtual Hacienda in Second Life

Gloria Clark, Humanities and Spanish at Penn State Harrisburg

Podcast #4: Second Language Learning Immersion via World of Warcraft

Steve Thorne, Department of Applied Linguistics, College of Liberal Arts, Penn State University Park

Though its been a bit longer than I had intended since my last update, I wanted to take a few minutes to show off some new screen shots from ChemBlaster

These screenshots were taken from the game's second level, which deals with ion identification (as compared to level 1 which is about element identification).  Though the core gameplay is the same, in level two, the player fires positive and negative charges at randomly generated elements to build out 10 of a possible 30 cations or anions. 

As you can see if you compare the new screens to the old ones, quite a few new interface elements have been added since the last update.  A few highlights for your reading pleasure:

• Logisitcal additions have been made to the interface, including a score field, timer, current target, and progress meter (right hand side), as well as a level indicator (bottom left as well as background). 
• A "targetting sight" has been added to the blaster itself, allowing the player to fire with greater accuracy (visible in the second screen - a small white cirlce near the top of the board)
• Improved completion animations (screen 3) create an explosion of confetti after a successful "blast" as well as reinforcement of the element/ ion/ or compound blasted on the right hand side of the screen.
• An optional "Elemental Aid" has been added to help players who might be struggling or playing the game on their own without an acompanying chemistry class.  By default, the aid is toggled off (screen 1) but it can be activated at any time and will scroll each of a level's possible targets along the bottom of the screen (screens 2 and 3).  Activiating the aid will cause a score or time penalty. 
• A "next ball" button added to the end of the upcoming blast balls bar (a light blue circle in all screens).  Though not necessary for level 1, this allows players to increase the speed of a playthrough by cycling right to the charge or element they want to fire next.  An advanced feature that will help players improve their score and maximize class bragging rights.

Next up on the ChemBlaster agenda is the addition of compound levels as well as conducting student testing to make sure the game scratches chemistry students where they itch.  Stay tuned for more updates and maybe even a gameplay video in the near future.

What a great idea!

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/09/17/nyu-poly-students-challe...

Why not take some course content and wrap some game activities around it?

The EGC participated in the PSU Libraries 2009 Open House over the past several days. We had a booth in the main check-out area, and talked to quite a few students about educational gaming and the new EGC Lab. Wow - it's always good to talk to the students.

Day two of the event we brought in the new Beatles Rock Band. The Beatles are timeless, so it's maybe not so amazing that traditional age students know the tunes and the lyrics. We even had the Nittany Lion sit down at the drums for a song!

In addition, the EGC worked with the library to help conceptualize an Augmented Reality Game (ARG). The premise here was that our President, Graham Spanier (an amateur magician) was practicing a magic trick and it want awry, causing a Nittany Lion statue in the library to disappear. Your job in the ARG is to scour the library for clues that eventually lead you to a "reverse the spell" spell that bring the lion back. View the great intro video for the ARG done by the PSU Digital Media Commons.

Fun stuff, and if you complete the ARG you are entered for a prize drawing of a Dell laptop! So far 53 players have completed the ARG, with six days of play time remaining.

All told, this was great event, and I'm happy the EGC was invited to participate. It helps us keep current on student thoughts in the realm of gaming.