Entering the education arcade

Abstract

Responding to social, economic, and technological trends which make games the most powerful medium for reaching young learners, The Education Arcade project, based in the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, seeks to prototype games that teach, develop curricular materials which support existing commercial titles, and help prepare teachers to use games in the classroom. This article reports on the first three prototypes that are producing -- Supercharged! (electromagnetism), Environmental Detectives (environmental science) and Revolution (American History).

References

1. GEE J. 2003. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Palgrave Mcmillan, New York.
2. HOLLAND, W., JENKINS, H., SQUIRE, K. 2003: Theory by design. In Video Game Theory. B. Perron and M. Wolf (eds). Routledge, New York, 25-46.
3. JENKINS, H. 2002. Digital renaissance: game theory. Technol. Rev. (March 29 2002). Available at http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_jenkins032902.asp
4. JENKINS, H., SQUIRE, K., TAN, P. You can't bring that game to school: Designing games to teach. In Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. B. Laurel (ed.). MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. (Forthcoming).
5. JENKINS, H. AND SQUIRE, K. 2003. Applied game theory: Democratizing games. Comput. Games Mag. (Aug. 2003), 100.
6. JENKINS, H. AND SQUIRE, K. 2003: Applied game theory: Understanding civilization (III). Comput. Games Mag. (Sept. 2003), 100.
7. JONES, S. 2003: Let the games begin: Gaming technology and entertainment among college students. Pew Center for Internet and American Life. At http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=93
8. KLOPFER, E., SQUIRE, K., AND JENKINS, H. 2002. Environmental detectives: PDAs as a window into a virtual simulated world. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education.
9. KLOPFER, E., SQUIRE, K., AND JENKINS, H. 2003. Augmented Reality Simulations on PDAs. AERA, Chicago, IL.
10. KLOPFER, E. AND WOODRUFF, E. 2003. Platforms for participatory simulations - Exploring systems and generating discourse with wearable and handheld computers. In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (Oslo, 2003).
11. REJESKI, D. 2002. Gaming our way to a better future. Avault.com. Sept. 23, 2002. Available at http://www.avault.com/developer/getarticle.asp?name=drejeski1
12. SAWYER, B. 2002. The next ages of game development. Avault.com. Sept. 30, 2002. Available at http://www.avault.com/developer/getarticle.asp?name=bsawyer1
13. SOLOWAY, E., GRANT, W., TINKER, R., ROSCHELLE, J., MILLS, M., RESNICK, M., BERG, R. AND EISENBERG, M. 1999. Science in the palms of their hands. Commun. ACM 42, 8 (Aug. 1999), 21-27.
14. SQUIRE, K. 2002. Cultural framing of computer/video games. Int. J. Comput. Gaming Res. 2, 1. Available at http://gamestudies.org/0102/squire/
15. SQUIRE, K. AND JENKINS, H. Six Scenarios for the Future of Games and Education. Insight. (Forthcoming).

Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Document management and text processing

    • Document capture

      • Graphics recognition and interpretation

• Computing methodologies

  • Computer graphics