TeachMeet_WA presentation at SciTech 27 March 2015.

What’s the BIG Idea About Games in Education?

This presentation was updated from my ECAWA presentation from 2013 when I first started discussing the use of games and Virtual Spaces with kids. There are many ideas which have come together in this short discussion and I hope that I did my PLN colleagues justice in mentioning things I have learned from them, and experiences in which I have participated, which have added to my growing knowledge of how to leverage such spaces as SecondLife, Open Sim, Quest Atlantis, 3DGameLab, Minecraft and World of Warcraft  in order to further expand my students’ horizons and give them licence to explore, create and develop persistence in their endeavours to achieve.

There are so many inspirational people who have already done a lot of groundwork in this area – in particular I would like to thank Bron Stuckey, Jo Kay, Lucas Gillispie, Marianne Malmstrom and Peggy Sheehy for their willingness to share ideas and work with teachers to empower them to become more creative in the use of games for learning. Without Kim Flintoff, who persuaded me to take my first steps into Virtual Worlds in 2007, and Lindy Orwin, who persuaded me to become a lab rat in her SecondLife study using Action Learning,  I probably would never have uncovered and experienced the power of virtual environments in education. As a matter of fact, these two individuals persuaded me of the power of virtual spaces to such an extent that I completely missed the Web 2.0 phenomenon and jumped from creating websites into creating virtual art works and taking part in online RP Tolkien style. I also attended many inworld conferences where I first met Jo Kay and Bron Stuckey and was inspired by the things sgared through these meetings and discussions.

The links I used in my talk were related to many of the experiences and resources the people mentioned have shared with others. I hope that in your perusal of these items you find time to delve further and uncover more of the research and reources that have developed from these.

Links from my Talk:

 

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