Tag: games

  • Code as Poetry in 4th Grade Scratch Club

    The highlight of my Mondays now is getting to co-facilitate an after-school Scratch Coding Club with my wife. Today one of our fourth graders discovered a wonderful Scratch block that simplified a much more complex set of blocks I’d showed him a few weeks ago, and created a simple shooting cannon / animated cannon. I…

  • Inspired by Ohio Student Interactive Scratch Games

    I’m presenting and attending at the 2018 Ohio Educational Technology Conference in Columbus today and tomorrow, and this afternoon I stopped by the poster sessions outside the vendor hall. I met several different Ohio high school students who have been learning to create interactive games using the free Scratch programming language and MakeyMakey controllers. This is…

  • Using 8 Bit Games and Humor to Present Serious Political Messages

    The website and political game project “GOP Arcade” (@GOParcade) offers telling insights into not only the issues of the 2016 election in the United States, but also the ways media and gaming can be used to influence voters and communicate serious political messages. The site features 8 bit online games (that means they have very…

  • Podcast427: Battlecode Coding Competition at MIT with Jonah Casebeer

    This podcast features an interview with Jonah Casebeer, a 17 year old family friend and rising senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) in Alexandria, Virginia. Jonah and three of his classmates entered the annual “Battlecode” Artificial Intelligence Programming Competition at MIT along with about 400 other teams in the fall of 2014. Their…

  • Gameification is SO Much More Than Badges

    Today at lunch in Philadelphia during the “Hacked Ed” pre-event for ISTE 2015, I had an opportunity to interview Michael Matera (@mrmatera). Michael is presenting two workshops at ISTE this year about gameification. He’s a 6th grade social studies teacher at the University School of Milwaukee, and his classroom website from last year (realmofnobles.com) is totally…

  • Podcast209: A 10 year old discusses Travian, an online simulation war game

    This podcast is a 40 minute interview with Alexander, a 10 year old fourth grader who has been playing the online simulation war game Travian for the past month. In addition to being fun and highly engaging, Travian requires players to quantitatively manage multiple resources (wheat, clay, iron, and wood,) negotiate alliances, effectively deal with…