Educational Technology

We were working on a new product idea for kids 3 to 7 years old the other day and began envisioning one version built specifically for the iPhone. But is the iPhone a platform that’s viable for children at the younger end of this age range, we wondered?

As this video and others of the same ilk demonstrate, kids *love* the iPhone and even some 2 year olds have no problem finding their way around:

For more videos of kids using the iPhone click here.

In this video from the 2008 Dust or Magic Institute, Warren Buckleitner talks about how children’s portable computing devices are changing childhood and comes to some insightful conclusions.

Born the same year as BF Skinner’s teaching machine (1958), Warren Buckleitner has been reviewing children’s technology products now for over half of his life. After five years in the classroom and ten years at the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, he established Children’s Technology Review earning him SIIA’s First Journalism Codie Award for “Best Software Reviewer.”

Warren is an advisor to Consumer Reports WebWatch and teaches both at NYU and the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times Circuits page, and writes for Parents, PARADE, Disney Family, Scholastic Parent & Child and others. Warren founded the Dust or Magic Institute (www.dustormagic.com) and the Mediatech Foundation (www.mediatech.org). He likes to try to IM with his two teenage daughters, who are his best teachers.

For more information about Warren and booking speaking engagements and workshops, visit his media links page.

Tanya Van Court, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Nickelodeon’s Noggin, ParentsConnect and Nick Jr.com, presents Nick’s new standards-based early childhood learning site, myNOGGIN.

Designed for preschoolers through first graders, myNOGGIN is an educational service that provides the same high quality, Noggin learning experience that children love and parents trust, with an extra bonus: it’s totally personalized!

Guided by national standards in preschool education, myNOGGIN makes the most of the time children spend playing online with a “connected learning” approach. We start with topics and tales that grab children’s interest, mix in favorite characters then use these ingredients to present concepts and skills that help kids learn. Why is this approach so effective? Because combining play with learning encourages children to dig deeper and develop a richer understanding.

For more information visit myNOGGIN.com. For more videos from Dust or Magic visit http://dustormagic.blip.tv.

Debra Lieberman, Ph.D talked about using interactive games to improve health knowledge, skills and behaviors this morning at the eighth annual Dust or Magic conference.

Health Games Research is an $8.25 million national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that is directed by Debra and supports research to enhance the quality and impact of interactive games used to improve health. Game platforms of interest range from game consoles, handheld game devices, arcade machines, Web sites and multiplayer online worlds, to exertion interfaces (dance pads, cameras pointed at players, motion-detecting remote controllers), robots, interactive television, electronic toys, context-sensitive programs or other emerging technologies that are becoming more affordable and accessible.

For more information about Debra’s program visit http://www.healthgamesresearch.org/. For more videos from Dust or Magic visit http://dustormagic.blip.tv.

In a few weeks this blog will be coming to you live from Dust or Magic, the exclusive conference of interactive toy designers, developers, manufacturers and critics held each Fall in Lambertsville, NJ, under the auspices of Children’s Technology Review.

I’ll be videotaping all of the presentations for the Dust or Magic Wiki and will also try to steal a few minutes during the conference (November 2-3) to post live. It won’t be in real-time, but will be the next best thing if you follow children’s interactive media and aren’t able to attend. This year’s speakers include:

Christopher Byrne, President Byrne Communications, Inc. aka The Toy Guy. Chris is one of the leading experts on toys and play. Over the past 27 years (and he’s not even old), he has served in a variety of positions with toy companies covering marketing, media, operations and product development. In 1988, he formed New York-based Byrne Communications, where he has served as a researcher, analyst and consultant to a variety of Fortune 100 companies. He is widely quoted in the media and appears regularly on national television commenting on toys. Besides his own web sites (The Toy Guy and new online Time to Play Magazine (www.timetoplaymag.com) he writes for trade publications including Toys & Family Entertainment and Royalties. Currently thetoyguy.com attracts millions of visitors annually. Chris will help us critique the crop of 2008 technology toys on hand at this year’s Institute.

Jim Gray, Ed.D. is head of the LeapFrog Lab where he oversees all user experience and product development research. He is responsible for ensuring that LeapFrog products maximize children’s engagement, fun, and learning. Jim has a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education from Michigan State University. He was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies, and Instructor of Interactive Media Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has contributed to dozens of publications and published studies and has been a driving force behind LeapFrog’s new learning path.

Claire Green is the President of Parents’ Choice Foundation, the oldest not-for-profit organization dedicated to the evaluation of children’s books, videos, toys, computers software, videos, television and magazines. Parents’ Choice was founded in 1978 by Claire’s mother, Diana Huss Green. Fewer than 15% of the products submitted to Parents’ Choice Awards Program receive a commendation in one of six award categories. Claire is a long-time participant of Dust or Magic, and has a deep conviction for empowering children, with all forms of media. She’ll be in the Reviewer’s panel on Monday morning, to lend her view on this year’s toys and software throughtout the event.

Benjamin Grimley is the Senior Director of PBS Interactive Businesses. He founded and leads PBS’ new Interactive Businesses group, including licensing, product development, and online distribution. In March 2008, his team launched PBS KIDS PLAY! for ages 3-6 in collaboration with PBS content providers including HIT Entertainment, National Geographic, The Jim Henson Company and Universal Studios. Previously, as Vice President of Business Development for Exent Technologies, Ben built Internet distribution channels for interactive publishers such as Atari, Microsoft Game
Studios, Riverdeep, Scholastic, Take-Two and Ubisoft. Ben holds an MBA from Johns Hopkins University.

Mark William Hansen is the Director of Business Development for the LEGO Group, and is the project lead for LEGO Universe, a new social construction site coming early 2009. He was the original architect of LEGO Factory, an experience that that bridges virtual design with real world construction allowing anyone to design custom LEGO models online which can then be ordered as a set for assembly “offline.” Hansen spent 3 years researching Mass Customization and Agile Systems at Aalborg University and served twelve years in the United States Navy. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and a Masters of Engineering from Aalborg University.

Kathleen Kremer, Ph.D. is the Manager of Child Research at Fisher-Price. She oversees product research and testing for the Learning, Preschool, and Creative Activities Divisions. She advises these teams on child development, education, interface design, and game play and provides creative input. Products she has worked on include the Smart Cycle, the KidTough Digital Camera and FP3 Player, Digital Arts and Crafts Studio, Easy Link Internet Launch Pad, Pixter and Computer Cool School. Prior to joining Fisher-Price, Kathleen was a Development Scientist at Educational Testing Service. She also has worked on various product evaluations for media organizations such as Nickelodeon, WGBH, and Sesame Workshop and has published book chapters and journal articles on education and child development. She holds an M.A. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.

Debra Lieberman, Ph.D., is a communication researcher and lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also directs the Health Games Research national program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to advance the design and effectiveness of digital interactive games used to improve health. Debra’s research focuses on processes of learning and behavior change with interactive media, with special interests in interactive games, health media, and children’s media. Debra has published widely and she consults for health organizations, education agencies, and media and technology companies to help design and evaluate interactive media for entertainment, learning, and health. Debra’s talk this year will be called Using Interactive Games to Improve Health Knowledge, Skills, and Behaviors.

Robin Raskin is a highly respected speaker, author, conference planner and blogger at YahooTech. Robin has been writing about raising kids in a digital world for nearly 30 years. The former editor of PC Magazine, and Editor-in-Chief of FamilyPC, she is the author of seven books on kids, including The Parents’ Guide to College Life (Random House, 2006) and consults on new media strategies for The Princeton Review. Robin is a long-time speaker at Dust or Magic. You can learn more about Robin at www.robinraskin.com

Scott Traylor, Chief KID and Founder, 360KID a kid-focused content and technology company dedicated to creating a love for learning through products that educate as well as entertain. 360KID provides turnkey development services to the broadcast, cable, textbook, and toy industries. Scott started his business over 16 years ago. His company has emerged as a recognized leader in the development of fun and engaging learning products. His clients include Sesame Workshop, LeapFrog, Discovery Channel, Hasbro, Highlights for Children, PBSkids, and many others. 360KID is a multi-award winning and three-time Emmy nominated company. Scott is continually reading, analyzing, and synthesizing research covering all aspects of kids and learning including new technologies, gaming, and different consumer-based delivery systems. He’s fascinated by electronic learning aids and technology instruction that is non-PC based. Scott believes nothing is impossible and so he pushes to make big dreams a reality, especially when it benefits children. See Scott’s 2006 Dust or Magic presentation here (on YouTube). You can see other presentations at http://dustormagic.wikispaces.com

Tanya Van Court is the General Manager Noggin and Sr. Vice President of Parents and Preschool Digital, Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Group. She oversees strategy and operations, as well as creative and editorial content for Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Group preschool and parents online businesses. Van Court assumed this position in the fall of 2006 and is responsible for the day-to-day management of Nick Jr.com (Playtime and Nick Jr. Parents), broadband offerings Nick Jr. Video and Nick Jr. Parents TV, NOGGIN.com, GoCityKids.com and the community site ParentsConnect.com. She is a graduate of Stanford University, where she received both her bachelors and masters degrees in Industrial Engineering.

Roger Wagner is the creator of HyperStudio — the number one selling educational software product in the world during the early ’90s. Roger was a witness to the beginning of personal computing, writing the first book on assembly language programming for the Apple II which included the the first published description of how to make a computer do bi-directional scrolling text. He was a magazine columnist prior to starting Roger Wagner Publishing, and he’s experienced the garage-startup, building a company with market leadership, the thrills and trauma of selling a company, and the aftermath of brand mismanagement. Join us for an after-dinner conversation with one of the first software developers in the age of personal computers, as he talks about the past, present and future of interactive publishing for schools.

Jennifer Wells is the Associate Director for PBS Interactive Businesses. A former student of Sandra Calvert, Jennifer leads interactive content development for PBS KIDS PLAY! Past projects include creating content for Bear in the Big Blue House, Curious George, Fisher-Price, Highlights Magazine, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Reading Rainbow, Schoolhouse Rock and many others. She holds an MA from Georgetown
University.

Institute Facilitators: Warren Buckleitner of Children’s Technology Review and Daren Carstens of Carstens Studios.

For more information about Dust or Magic visit their website and wiki.

I confess that I came to loath Algebra class when I was in school, but times change and now kids are studying coordinate systems, irrational numbers (considering the swooning market aren’t all numbers irrational today?), logarithms, linear equations, fractional exponents and polynomials by playing video games.

Though some will always be skeptical that students are learning anything this way, the evidence is mounting that they can and do. The New York Times reports that in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn the eighth-grade math class is sounding like a video arcade, with students vanquishing virtual enemies and learning math in the process:

This fall, New York City is rolling out Dimension M — M stands for math — in 109 middle schools across the five boroughs after trying the game out in two dozen schools, including I.S. 30, last year. Like a modern twist on “Jeopardy!,” the fast-paced video game quizzes students on prealgebra and algebra topics ranging from prime numbers to fractions and complex equations. A correct answer brings 500 or more points, a wrong one as few as 25; the player with the most points wins.

“You have to be at the top of your game,” said Salma Nakhlawi, 13, who has been brushing up on her math skills along with her hand-eye coordination so that she can play the video game Dimension M with her friends. “I used to hate math, but I’ve started to like it. I actually understand it more.”

I’ve reported on Dimension M before, of course, and truth be told have been following Nt Etuks company since the first Serious Games Summit where he demonstrated an early prototype. But while there’s growing anecdotal evidence games are powerful tools for teaching and learning, hard evidence has been hard to come by. That’s about to change. According to THE Journal this week:

There’s a growing movement in academia and industry recognizing the value of this medium as an educational tool both inside and outside the classroom. This week, eight colleges and universities added their inertia to this movement, joining with Microsoft to launch a new alliance to study the benefits of gaming for math and science instruction and STEM equity.

The consortium, dubbed the “Games for Learning Institute,” is being led by New York University and includes Columbia University, City University of New York (CUNY), Dartmouth College, Parsons, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Teachers College. These members are matching an investment from Microsoft Research of $1.5 million to provide a total of $3 million in funding for the effort.

Adding to this tide, my colleague Lee Wilson of Headway Strategies is writing a white paper on the power of video games to teach, and we have a proposal pending for a panel to discuss the latest research findings at the 2009 Game Developers Conference’s Serious Games Summit in March.

Soon, when your kids ask for help with their Algebra 101 homework and your eyes glaze over, you’ll be able to tell them with confidence “go play a video game.” How cool is that?

Unless you’re a red-meat conservative fundamentalist, the recent news from Alaska has been disturbing. Snow Job. Square Glasses. Need I say more? Finally, there’s some progressive news from the 50th state that showcases a simple, inexpensive and effective approach to teaching middle school writing.

I’m talking about a multi-author blog called Tell the Raven that is one Fairbanks, AK teacher’s grass-roots effort to make writing relevant to the kids in his 6th grade class. Teacher Doug Noon writes,

One of my challenges as a writing teacher is to show my students that their writing can be a celebration of the ordinary. After watching what they choose to write about, and how they respond to each others’ writing, I’ve come to believe that global citizenship begins with local knowledge. Without a solid grasp of what’s happening in their own backyards, students have difficulty understanding the wider world. It is my hope that learning to care about, and take responsibility for what happens in our own communities, will encourage an ethic of care that extends out to the whole world, which is what our totem pole story teaches. [...] We write every day. Each student has a spiral notebook in which they do their “rough draft” thinking. From there, they can take their work directly to the Web. I moderate all posts and comments, so if a piece needs revision, it doesn’t go out until I’ve seen it. They can read each others’ work at every phase of the process. They share their rough drafts informally, and they love to read and leave comments for one another on the Web site. These interactions are critically important for building our writing community, as students come to realize they are writing for each other and for people from around the world, and not just the teacher.

Seems to me this practice could be syndicated to every middle-school classroom in the country at little cost but to great effect. Among other benefits, it makes writing relevant and not something done “…just for the teacher,” as Noon observes. It helps blur local, regional and national boundaries, impressing on kids that they are writing for — and are part of — a global community. And it channels kids into using the web as a creative tool for personal expression, a core 21st Century Skill they need to succeed.

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Better late than never - and just in time for the presedential election - the state of Florida is getting serious about math. New York serious game company Tabula Digita (New York Serious Game Developer Raises $6M) announced the sale of their supplemental pre-algebra and algebra DimensionM video game to 24 middle schools in Broward County, Florida, the nations sixth largest public school system.

Students naturally like to learn through games, and the three-dimensional, virtual world format is deeply engaging. It’s a high impact, motivating learning tool that greatly assists when teaching a complex subject like algebra,” said Jeanine Gendron, Ed.D., director for the district’s department of instructional technology. “That subject is especially challenging during the middle school years, and quite often children become turned off because they view it as difficult. But from observing students using this program, we know that Tabula Digita is going to have a profound positive effect on the attention of our middle school learners.

Fore more visit the DimensionM web site and Serious Games Source.

You hear the words “teens” and “games” in the same sentence all the time, but seldom with the word “civics” included. Continuing their series of outstanding, unbiased reports on American Culture, the PEW Internet and American Life project released Teens, Games and Civics this week. In the first national survey of it’s kind, PEW found that nearly all American teens play computer, console, or cell phone games:

Video gaming is pervasive in the lives of American teens — young teens and older teens, girls and boys, and teens from across the socioeconomic spectrum. Opportunities for gaming are everywhere, and teens play video games frequently. When asked, half of all teens reported playing a video game “yesterday.” Those who play daily typically play for an hour or more.

Fully 97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games. Additionally:

• 50% of teens played games “yesterday.”
• 86% of teens play on a console like the Xbox, PlayStation, or Wii.
• 73% play games on a desktop or a laptop computer.
• 60% use a portable gaming device like a Sony PlayStation Portable, a Nintendo DS, or a Game Boy.
• 48% use a cell phone or handheld organizer to play games.

Game playing is ubiquitous among Americans teenagers. Fully 99% of boys and 94% of girls report playing video games. Younger teen boys are the most likely to play games, followed by younger girls and older boys. Older girls are the least “enthusiastic” players of video games, though more than half of them play. Some 65% of daily gamers are male; 35% are female.

Read the highlights here or download a PDF of the full report.

I began playing World of Warcraft when I was a suit for Pearson. Though I worked my way up to a L20-something Paladin, the daily 4 hours as a commuter and on the phone, and 10 hours at the computer and on the phone killed my interest in grinding higher. Still, WoW was compelling and deep, and I acknowledge was my gateway drug to playing and working with the new - and next - generation of MMORPGs and virtual worlds.

From the beginning I saw beyond games’ entertainment value to their high potential to be used as teaching and learning simulations. That led me to the first several Serious Game Summits that were held in Crystal City, MD just across from the Pentagon. From the spook-to-wonk ratio of attendees there, it was clear the military-industrial complex was on to the potential of games to train, too. In a Presidential season with both sides all puffed up about their ability to defend the country, the constitution and the borders, Wired reports today that:

American military and intelligence communities are increasingly worried that would-be bin Ladens might gather in a virtual world, to plan a real-life attack. But the spies haven’t given many details, about how it might be done. Now, a Pentagon researcher has laid out how such a terror plot might unfold. The planning ground is World of Warcraft. The main target of this possibly nuclear strike: the White House.

There’s been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds. But online spaces like World of Warcraft are making some spooks, generals and Congressmen extremely nervous. They imagine terrorists rehearsing attacks in these worlds, just like the U.S. military trains with commercial shoot-em-up games. They worry that the massively multiplayer games make it incredibly easy to gather plotters from around the world. But, mostly, virtual worlds are nerve-wracking to spies because they’re so hard to monitor. The accounts are pseudonymous. The access is global. The jargon is thick. And most of the spy agencies’ employees aren’t exactly level-70 shamans. Continues here >>>

At first I rolled my eyes thinking here’s more fodder for the haters to bash all video games. But all that palaver about terrorists training in WoW got me to wondering: which Presidential or VP candidate can see WoW’s nefarious underworld better from their home state: Obama-Biden or McBush-Impalin?

More importantly does saying you can see something — Russia, polar bears thriving in the melt, or World of Warcraft — mean you understand its subtleties and nuance, or is that only maya, the dangerous illusion?