Monday, March 2, 2015
Game Based Learning The 21st Century Learning Appoach
"Herein lies a moral about how videogames are influencing higher education. To learn more about videogames in academe, Joel Foreman sought out the insights of five leading-edge thinkers in the field: James Paul Gee, J. C. Herz, Randy Hinrichs, Marc Prensky, and Ben Sawyer. All five had traveled to San Jose, California, in March 2004 for the Serious Games Summit at the annual Game Developers Conference. They discussed the following six topics:
- The dysfunctions of conventional instruction
- The power of simulations
- The importance of game-based learning communities
- The reasons videogames promise a better learning future
- The changes necessary for the new paradigm to take hold
- The practical steps that colleges/universities and influential academics can take to move institutions down the trail blazed by USC and others.
He spoke with each of the five individually, culled their comments from several hours of recordings, and then combined the comments to simulate the continuity and interaction of a group discussion. He has also asserted some editorial license to eliminate the infelicities and redundancies of speech."
If you are interested in understanding the future of education in 21st century, and how game-based learning might influence it, this article or opinions by these five (5) experts, is certainly something you should read and digest !
Friday, February 27, 2015
Game based Learning An x Learn Perspective Paper
Link to Game-based Learning paper (620 KB PDF file. By Kurt Squire, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Funded by the e-Learning Consortium
"(Executive Summary) Interactive digital media, or video games, have emerged as a powerful new economic, cultural, and now educational force. Games are now a multi-billion dollar industry, and new conferences, journals, and research initiatives are all competing to become the home of serious gaming. But when most people think of educational games, they think of Reader Rabbit, Math Blaster, or quiz games. Others see todays games and assume that theyre primarily about fancy graphics. In truth, games are much more powerful; they provide situated experiences in which players are immersed in complex, problem solving tasks. Good games teach players more than just facts; they provide ways seeing and understanding problems and, critically, supply opportunities to become different kinds of people.
This study takes these theoretical notions of situated learning through game play and shows how a new generation of serious games coming out of (perhaps oddly) business strategy, advergaming, and entertainment gaming all share common features that point to a future paradigm for e-Learning. Most critically for instructional designers, the movement toward serious games challenges us to rethink fundamental assumptions about instructional design."
Have fun reading! Thanks Kurt Squire and the e-Learning Consortium for sharing this paper with the rest of the world!
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Tip Tree Map Example Display colors of groups based on condition
function f() {
var colorScale;
var cd = this.chartDefinition;
cd.legend = false;
cd.leaf_fillStyle = function(scene) {
/*
if(!colorScale) {
colorScale = pv.ramp(red, blue);
var extent = this.chart.data.dimensions(size).extent();
if(extent)
colorScale.domain(extent.min.value, extent.max.value);
}
*/
// Is colorScale created ?
if(!colorScale) {
colorScale = pv.Scale.linear().range("red", "black", "blue","#708090");
var extent = this.chart.data.dimensions(size).extent();
if(extent) {
var min = extent.min.value;
var b=500;
var c=1000;
var max = extent.max.value;
//colorScale.domain(min, (min + max) / 2, max);
colorScale.domain(min,b,c,max);
}
}
var size = scene.getSize();
return colorScale(size);
};
}