VIDEO GAMES IN EDUCATION:SCHOOL GOES VIRTUAL

posted by Joyce Schwarz, JCOM, www.joycecom.com, and blogging at www.hollywood2020.blogs.com -- talking about video games as education and delving into the future of virtual worlds and other immersive environments for learning. The essence and what's new in this video is the idea of adapting commercial games and AAA publishers to adapt their games for educational purposes or at least make them available for adapting for in-classroom or on the edge of the classroom. The above video is courtesy of Orange County (CA) Department of Ecucation 22 min 12 sec - Apr 17, 2006 auto-posted on this blog courtesy of a link from Google Video.Games in Education video created by Mark Wagner and Michael Guerena of the Orange County (CA) Department of Education's Educational Technology group. Permission via Wagner and Guarena to post for educational purposes.

In doing a search for what's hot in video and virtual worlds for educational purposes, Hollywood2020.blogs.com, blogger Joyce Schwarz, JCOM, emerging entertainment analyst/consultant came across this video done by the ed-tech dept of OC's Dept of Education. The discussion (which is a little bit too many talking heads for our taste-- but it's academic I guess). includes talk about games as homework, games as group collaboration & more. Neverwinternights includes tools for modifying the game for educational purposes -- that's an off-the-shelf game according to this video. COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG: The video talks about Colonial Williamsburg who has a terrific education department-- Blogger Joyce Schwarz was very impressed with their CD ROM's and their DVDs prepared for educational purposes. They also have an ongoing PBS TV show and of course they tie-in to the Colonial Williamsburg real world re-creation which is part theme park and part museum. If you have not been there-- head there with your kids on your next vacation. OC COMMUNITY COLLEGES MULTIMEDIA PROGRAM: . Hollywood2020.blogs.com blogger Joyce Schwarz was especially interested in the OC Educational technology program because 10 years ago, Schwarz served as the industry advisor and co-creator of the Fullerton College multimedia retraining program and was a co-writer on the State of California grant for retraining of unemployed engineers and others in the OC area into the multimedia arena. AUGMENTED REALITY GAMES USED FOR EDUCATION: In the video posted on www.hollywood2020.blogs.com, Dr. James Gee from the University of Wisconsin talks about the value of augmented reality gaming systems. Where basically another screen is put on top of the real world and enables students/trainees etc to learn by exploring the new 'augmented reality'. A point that Gee makes is that students -- especially girls have to feel that tech is just a part of everyday-- that it's not hard and that it is simply another way of learning. In other words, wearing goggles or using a computer is just as simple as reading a bookjs