Games and Learning

Over the coming weeks, the Mindshift blog that tracks technology and education over at KQED will be launching a guide to games and learning from Jordan Shapiro, author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide To Maximum Euphoric Bliss, and Forbes columnist on game-based learning, education technology, and parenting..

The series will be tackling the big principles behind games and learning as well as the more tangible questions about how it gets used in the classroom. For developers this guide could serve as a way to quickly survey the market needs and challenges both within schools and in the consumer market more generally.

This is what Mindshift’s Tina Barseghian has to say about the effort:

How can games unlock a rich world of learning? This is the big question at the heart of the growing games and learning movement that’s gaining momentum in education. And it’s the question that MindShift will explore in depth in the upcoming series of articles The MindShift Guide to Games and Learning. Over the course of the next few weeks and months, MindShift will explain the key ideas in game-based learning, and discuss pedagogy, implementation, and assessment. We’ll make sense of the available research and provide suggestions for practical use, and we’ll talk honestly about the pros and cons of game-based learning. In short  we’ll offer you a guide for adding games to your classroom. The post series will evolve into a downloadable guide, and can be used as a touchstone for thoughtful consideration of best practices for teachers and parents.

We’ll be checking in on this effort from time to time.

Editor’s Note: This series is supported, in part, by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. The Center also is responsible for this site.