Tonight I am teaching Part II of my introduction to Games in Education course. Part I was offered on December 13th and again on February 27th. Part I focused on video games as constructivist learning environments, and educators played the serious game for change, Food Force, hands-on both times. Tonight we will be exploring the social elements of video games in greater depth, including their potential to serve as social constructivist learning environments, and of course, as instruments of social change. I focus on the work of Dewey, Vygotsky, and Bruner, followed by Shaffer, Squire, and Steinkuehler. Tonight the participants will actually play Anarchy Online, a massively multiplayer online role playing (MMORPG) game such as their students probably play. I’m looking forward to hearing their reflections and will share what I can here.
Below is a link to the slides in case you are interested.
GamesInEd2.pdf (22.8 MB)
See, I’ve been working. ;) I also expect to have another update online soon. :)