Home :: Focus Area Initiatives

Educational Gaming Initiative

How can we make activities that bring people together around knowledge and the exchange of ideas more engaging? How might we also remove or lessen barriers of time, distance, and culture?

Under the umbrella of this initiative, the NMC sponsors research and projects that focus on ways the engagement of games and virtual spaces can be applied to learning and online interactions, and on activities that stimulate the use and experimentation of these technologies. Examples include the design of virtual learning experiences and spaces; traditional and experimental meetings, symposia and conferences, in both online and face-to-face contexts; experimental and proof-of-concept events hosted in the virtual world of Second Life; and NMC Virtual Worlds, a suite of development services that support the development of and educational uses for virtual worlds.


  • Focus on: how the engagement of games and virtual spaces applies to learning and interactions
  • Stimulate: use and experimentation

Build Community
engage people

Contribute
produce things

 

The content below is related to this initiative and comes from various places across the NMC web site. Items are listed in reverse chronological order.

Educational Gaming Initiative

Connect@NMC: Ruben Puentedura on Telling Stories, Playing Games

Posted May 12th, 2009 by Alan Levine
in

Connect@NMC May 18 2009

Would a serious researcher look to comic books and videogames as sources of inspiration for how to transform education? Of course they would!

Join us for a Connect@NMC conversation, as we talk with one of NMC's long time most popular presenters, Dr. Ruben Puentedura, CEO of NMC Partner, Hippasus. Please join us Monday, May 18, 2009 at 11:00am PT (check local time) when we talk to Ruben about about the lessons to be learned from these and related media, and his experiences applying them in both higher ed and K12 classrooms.

2008 NMC Educators in Second Life Survey

Posted November 26th, 2008 by Alan Levine
in

2007 NMC Second Life Survey Sent out to members of the NMC, our in-world educational community, and the Second Life Educators Listserv (SLED) in May 2008, this survey represents the interests, activities, and demographics of more than 350 educators. Overall, the results reflect the highly social interaction of Second Life and how educators have formed and contribute to a vibrant community in this virtual world space.

Download 2008 Educators in Second Life Survey Results Summary (52k Mb, 2 pp)
Download 2008 Educators in Second Life Survey Results (308 kb, 10 pp) Creative Commons license; some rights reserved
414 downloads as of May 10 2009

  • 814 reads

Invitation to visit University of Pacific in Second Life

Posted September 5th, 2008 by Alan Levine
in

One of the NMC Virtual Worlds projects this year was construction of the virtual campus for the University of the Pacific which included a mixture of replication of campus structures, such as Burns Tower, and creation of new spaces which only exist on the virtual campus.

Burns Tower in SL

Since the ribbons were cut May 7, 2008, faculty and staff at the University have been busy using the space and developing new applications for therr virtual learning space.

They are inviting you to learn more about their Second Life campus and how it has already been put to use in this new machinima video:

Ball State Digital Artists Showcased in Second Life on NMC’s Ars Simulacra

Posted August 21st, 2008 by Larry Johnson
in

Imagine flying over a pyramid shaped boat as a variety of tones from the engine combine to create a melody. That is just what visitors will get when they interact with the new virtual art collection created by Ball State University faculty in Second Life.

John Fillwalk, Ball State associate professor of art, and director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts and Animation (IDIAA), is the lead artist on a project that will be showcased in Second Life beginning Sunday, Aug. 24 2008, and run through September.

The NMC offered Fillwalk and the IDIAA the chance to transform an entire Second Life island with interactive virtual art. The collection, which will be up for a month, is part of a series of installations hosted by NMC throughout the year.

NMC Announces $100,000 in Virtual Learning Prizes

Posted May 15th, 2008 by NMC
in

The New Media Consortium (NMC) announced today the call for proposals for the 2008-09 NMC Virtual Learning Prize, a $100,000 competitive program of awards intended to create a collection of innovative open-source learning experiences that make use of the unique attributes of a virtual learning environment. (See the press release.)

As many as 20 NMC Virtual Learning Prizes will be awarded in 2008. Each of the US$5,000 awards will provide a cash incentive paid to the awardee of $500 as well as $4,500 in expert development assistance from the NMC Virtual Worlds team to create the learning experience. The range of inworld services available to awardees to actualize the proposed ideas includes professional building, scripting, design, animation, avatar design, and/or related services.

NMC Virtual Learning Prize

Posted May 14th, 2008 by NMC
in

The NMC Virtual Learning Prize is a $100,000 competitive program of awards intended to create a collection of innovative open-source learning experiences that make use of the unique attributes of a virtual learning environment. As many as 20 NMC Virtual Learning Prizes will be awarded in 2008. (See Press Release )

Each of the US$5,000 awards will provide a cash incentive paid to the awardee of $500 as well as $4,500 in expert development assistance from the NMC Virtual Worlds team to create the learning experience. The range of in-world services available to awardees to actualize the proposed ideas includes professional building, scripting, design, animation, avatar design, and/or related services.

NMC CEO Larry Johnson Metanomics Interview

Posted May 5th, 2008 by Alan Levine
in
larry-johnson-metamonics-sm.jpg

On Friday April 25, NMC CEO Larry Johnson was a guest interviewee for the Metanomics series, the weekly live show that takes place in, and is broadcast live from Second Life.

As part of an event atClever Zebra's vBusiness Expo, in this interview, Metanomics host Robert Bloomfield asked Larry about the NMC's Virtual worlds programs and then discussed more on Larry's recent experience testifying before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the US Congress.

metanomics-lj_006.jpg

You can also find an audio recording of this interview plus soon a transcript, at http://metanomics.net/larry-johnson

See Also: http://metanomics.net/larry-johnson

Symposium on Creativity Photo Stream

Posted August 30th, 2007 by Alan Levine
in

During the August 12-18 NMC Symposium on Creativity in Second Life we asked participants to share any of their event photos stored in flickr by marking them wit the tag slcreativity.

We had a large amount of cooperation, as there are more than 1000 phots tagged with slcreativity on flickr . In celebration, we used some free software and those images to generate a series of photomosaics- taking one photo from the collection

we can recast it as a mosaic made of hundreds of thumbnails of all the images:

Mosaic of Symposium photos

The Role of Play and Preparing for a Changing Student Population - An Interview with Rachel Smith

Posted August 29th, 2007 by Alan Levine
in
Play Now

In this 9 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Rachel Smith, Vice President of NMC Services for the New Media Consortium. The interview was recorded at the 2007 Seminars On Academic Computing Conference where Rachel Smith presented two session, "Games for Learning" and "The Role of Play and Preparing for a Changing Student Population".

Students are arriving on campus with a set of expectations and behaviors that differ from those of previous generations, including the faculty, who are faced with engaging them in the process of learning. Students' experience with new kinds of games and media has shaped their view of what learning is and how it occurs.

Rachel Smith, 2007 Seminars On Academic Computing Conference
See Also: http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/podcasttheroleofplay/44985

ZeroG SkyDancer Performance

Posted August 28th, 2007 by Alan Levine
in
zerog-mov.jpg

It’s been more than a week since the end of the NMC Symposium on Creativity on Second Life, yet we continue to find thing to share!

As noted, from the Friday highlights, we ended that day with 3 performances of DanCoyote Antonelli’s ZeroG SkyDancers, one of the most unique and demonstratively creative art forms in Second Life (learn more about DC’s concepts of hyperformalism…)

View Quicktime: ZeroG SkyDancers Video
See Also: http://sl.nmc.org/2007/08/28/zerog-video/
123next ›last »
Syndicate content