AERA Releases “Ed-Talk” Videos and Research Fact Sheets on Important Issues in Education and Learning
December 6, 2016 in Blog, Center News, External News, Feature
AERA has released 31 “Ed-Talk” videos that feature leading education scholars discussing cutting-edge research on a range of important education and learning issues.
Read more »Game Time
August 25, 2016 in Blog, Center News, CGI Post, External News, Feature
How the power of games inspires solutions to today’s biggest challenges By Lara Cole For Sasha Barab, professor of innovation in ASU’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society and professor of education in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, it’s “game on” as he and his team create virtual solutions to society’s challenges. […]
Read more »AERA Brings Scholars and Thought Leaders to February Knowledge Forum
March 2, 2016 in Blog, Center News
A first-of-its kind event in education research, the Forum aimed to connect the science and scholarship of education research to policy and practice emphasizing the value of diverse expertise.
Read more »School for the Future of Innovation in Society
November 24, 2015 in Blog, Center News, CGI Post, External News, Feature, News
What does the future hold? SFIS encourages scientists and citizens alike to shape a desirable tomorrow. How?
Read more »New E-Book on Power of Play
September 2, 2015 in Blog, Center News
This new e-book explores the potential of multi-user videogames for bringing about academic and pro-social ends.
Read more »CGI Partners with Intel to create the Next Big Thing in Professional Development
July 24, 2015 in Blog, Center News
The Center for Games and Impact at ASU has partnered with Intel to innovate around their online teacher professional development courses. Intel, a leader in online teacher PD has trained millions of teachers around the globe through its Engage program. ASU Center for Games and Impact is a leader in investigating, innovating, and cultivating games for […]
Read more »ASU STEM Career Camp Summer 2015
May 29, 2015 in Blog, Center News
This week the Center for Games & Impact team spent a day with a group of middle school children as part of their summer STEM career camp experience. The students were interested in what it takes to get started in a career in game design and development. The morning started with sharing about how games […]
Read more »CGI awarded ETS grant for game-based assessment project
April 21, 2015 in Blog, Center News
The Arizona State University (ASU) Center for Games & Impact (CGI) is awarded Educational Testing Service (ETS) grant to explore affordances of game-based assessments.
Read more »PBS Kids’ new online world launches (via USA Today)
April 14, 2015 in Blog, Center News, CGI Post, News
When PBS KIDS today finally launches its own online world for children ages 6-9, it’ll allow kids to build and show off their creations, DeWitt said, but it’ll be…
Read more »Prof. Reed Stevens Talk “Cyborg Learning” on 4/23 at ASU
April 8, 2015 in Blog, Center News, CGI Post, News
RSVP below to join us to hear Professor Reed Stevens talk, “Cyborg learning: How our increasingly mobile and networked lives transform the possibilities for learning and education”.
Read more »How ‘Minecraft’ is Transforming Developing Cities Around the World (via Mashable)
April 2, 2015 in Blog, Center News, CGI Post, News
[B]efore the project began and workers picked up tools, community members were asked to pick up a keyboard and mouse and reimagine this park inside of Minecraft.
Read more »Wash Away Mobile Game Challenge by UBS Optimus Foundation (via Innocentive)
March 24, 2015 in Blog, Center News, CGI Post, News
This Challenge requires Solvers to present their ideas for a mobile phone game which can educate 5-14 year old children about better hygiene practices and persuade…
Read more »FoldIt: Puzzles to Save Mankind
March 11, 2015 in Blog
Foldit is the classic discovery game. An intriguing scientific problem is turned into a playful challenge and suddenly thousands of ordinary people begin contributing…
Read more »Play & Design Wednesday: Game teams, hardware and software
February 4, 2015 in Blog
Game design documents are a great way to get a video game idea up and running, keep organized, and make sure all bases are covered. However, not everyone on a team…
Read more »January Brown Bag: Science & Learning Games
January 7, 2015 in Blog
Join us for the first CGI Brown Bag Speaker of 2015! Professor Rikke Magnussen, visiting from Aalborg University of Denmark, will talk about community driven science learning games, and scientific discovery games for science education. Magnussen will share insights from four years of research into these types of games related to: 1) students reflective embodied […]
Read more »Learning, Literacies and Technologies at ASU Teachers College
December 17, 2014 in Blog, Center News, News
ASU Teachers College’s graduate programs are listed in the top 20 (among 245 public and private graduate programs nationwide) of the 2015 U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools rankings released earlier this year. In Arizona, the Teachers College ranks first among graduate programs in the state. Masters candidates and graduates looking to take […]
Read more »What We’re Playing: Gift Ideas
December 12, 2014 in Blog
This month we will highlight games that our players thought might made good holiday gift ideas. In this first post check out game gift ideas for teens through adults.
Read more »Enriching lives and minds through education (via ASU Teachers College)
December 10, 2014 in Blog, Center News, News
Read more »Breaking it down: Start using data to power up personal change
November 17, 2014 in Blog, News
The Games & Impact Cycling Team is blogging, and racing, their way to better health. In this post, getting started with using data to achieve fitness goals.
Read more »Play & Design Wednesday: Creating a Design Document
November 5, 2014 in Blog
So, you want to make a video game. You have an idea already in mind with the art style, mechanics, sounds, and everything else. All you need now is a team of people to get the project moving forward, right? Here is the best advice I have: slow down. You are not going anywhere until […]
Read more »Playing for Health: The Games & Impact Cycling Team
October 28, 2014 in Blog
Announcing the Games & Impact Cycling Team. Support our fundraising efforts for Special Olympics El Tour de Tucson on November 22, 2014.
Read more »What We’re Playing for Halloween
October 20, 2014 in Blog, Uncategorized
What We’re Playing is a twice-a-month series from the Center for Games & Impact Innovation Lab highlighting some of the interesting games we have played, whether work-related or not. Please join in and comment with your takes on the games mentioned, or to share what you’ve recently played that has left an impression on you. Check […]
Read more »ASU education initiatives win high-impact grants (via ASU News)
October 17, 2014 in Blog, Center News, News
Four high-impact grants totaling $17 million have been awarded to Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE).
Read more »Game-based Approach to Teacher Education at ASU Builds Essential Skills (via Games and Learning)
October 15, 2014 in Blog, Center News, News
The Center for Games & Impact is incredibly proud to announce that the Joan Ganz Cooney Center has officially released their case study about the innovative teacher training program Quest2Teach. This initiative is created in partnership by the Center, E-Line Media, the Sanford Inspire Program, and ASU Teachers College faculty and leaders including, Professor Jim Gee, Dean […]
Read more »Helping Youth Thrive in a Rapidly Changing, Digitally Connected World: From Video Games to Blended-Learning Pathways
In this presentation, Professor Sasha Barab will first share why games provide such potential as an innovative curriculum. Based on these big ideas, he will share learning impact guides available at the ASU Center for Games & Impact and designed to help players, parents, and teachers unlock the power that exists in commercial and educational […]
Read more »What we’re playing: Pulse, Papers, Puzzles
What We’re Playing is a twice-a-month series from the Center for Games & Impact Innovation Lab highlighting some of the interesting games we have played, whether work-related or not. Please join in and comment with your takes on the games mentioned, or to share what you’ve recently played that has left an impression on you. Check […]
Read more »What We’re Playing: The Destiny Edition
September 19, 2014 in Blog
What We’re Playing is a twice-a-month series highlighting some of the interesting games we have played, whether work-related or not. This week: Destiny. Have you played?
Read more »Vying for Funds: A Kickstarter Story
September 17, 2014 in Blog
CGI lead game designer, Doug Woolsey, and his game project, Sand Hat Games, realized funding for their card game, Vye: The Card Game of Capture and Control, less than 24 hours from launch on Tuesday. The Sand Hat Games team, made of Woolsey, and colleagues Joe Morrissey and Vince D`Amelio, are veteran game developers who […]
Read more »ASU unveils new center to study global education (via ASU Teachers College)
September 17, 2014 in Blog, Center News, News
Recognizing education as a universal pathway toward a better world, MLFTC at ASU announced the formation of its new Center for Advanced Studies in Global Education.
Read more »Friday Reads: Is it a sport?
September 12, 2014 in Blog
I spent some time today catching up on interesting reads in the world of eSports today and noticed the president of ESPN, John Skipper, mentioned he does not consider eSports to be sports. Here’s Skipper’s quote taken from re/code: “It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition,” said […]
Read more »ICYMI: Top social media reads for August 2014
September 5, 2014 in Blog
Social Media top five reads on Facebook and Twitter.
Read more »What we’re playing as summer turns into fall
September 5, 2014 in Blog
Welcome to the first of our new “What We’re Playing” blog series at the Center for Games & Impact. At the Center, we take the power of video games to bring about positive social impact very seriously. And, we also just enjoy playing new (or, new to us) games, sharing these experiences with you and […]
Read more »Top 5 Learning Games from GLS 2014 Showcase
June 13, 2014 in Blog, Center News, News
[View the story “Top 5 Games from GLS 10 Showcase” on Storify]
Read more »Gaming Research at ASU (via ASU Magazine)
May 16, 2014 in Blog, Center News, News
Research on video games teaching youth is building at ASU.
Read more »Review of the ASU Impact-Based Research Conference
May 3, 2014 in Blog, Center News, News, Press Room, Uncategorized
First of its kind Impact-Based Research (IBR) Conference hosted by ASU in collaboration with the Center for Games & Impact, E-Line Media, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, and the ASU College of Public Programs.
Read more »The rise of eSports
April 29, 2014 in Blog
The growth of electronic sports — better known as eSports — has been rapid over the last two years. The term eSports is an umbrella that describes the competitive gaming community based around real-time strategy, fighting, first-person shooter, and multiplayer online battle arena games where teams of four or more compete for trophies and prize […]
Read more »Social Emotional Learning and Video Games
January 21, 2014 in Blog, Center News, News, Press Room
Impact Games & Middle School Curriculum At the Center for Games & Impact we envision a world where we understand and optimize the unique power of games for learning and social impact. One of the central ways we work to make our vision a reality is through innovative games and game-infused solutions for education. Together […]
Read more »Take the Digital Games and Family Life Survey
January 16, 2014 in Blog, Center News, News
Are you the parent or guardian of a child between 4 and 13 years of age? Do your children play video games? If so, you are eligible to take a survey about digital games and family life, co-sponsored by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and Arizona State University. Parents who complete the […]
Read more »Friday Round Up: What We Are Playing
If you didn’t catch the first post in our Round Up Series, make sure to give it a look. Last week’s post highlighted the exponentially growing world of eSports. This week, I asked the team to share what they have been playing. Never Enough eSports To start, some of us are still taking a look […]
Read more »Games & Impact Link Round Up: First up, eSports
September 27, 2013 in Blog
Welcome to the Round Up Series This is the first post for our new weekly round up series for the Center for Games & Impact blog. At the Center we are all dedicated to games and positive social impact but our team members work in a variety of disciplines. I love hearing about what everyone […]
Read more »Bringing journalism, impact games together at ASU
August 26, 2013 in Blog, Center News, News
Journalism and Impact Games I started 2013 with a question: What would it mean to teach journalists to design newsgames? After talking the idea over with my colleagues at the Center for Games & Impact and connecting with Retha Hill and the New Media Innovation Lab at the Cronkite School we spent the spring 2013 semester […]
Read more »Games & Impact Contest: Compose your own video game music
July 22, 2013 in Blog
Music and art have the potential to affect our emotional states and even our perception of the world around us. Games for impact, more than simply contexts for actions taken in the world, are about what we feel and understand. They draw power and potential from key elements of music and art to do their work on […]
Read more »CGI leveling-up Arizona’s next generation impact game designers
Summer Camp: Crafts… Glue… Game Design? For many people summer time childhood memories conjure images of bike riding, swimming, cartoon marathons, or popsicle sticks and glue while doing crafts at summer camp. For a new generation of kids growing up with ubiquitous computing, summer also means playing videogames, and learning computer programming and game design. In fact, for the past two weeks […]
Read more »CGI – Cronkite Innovation Lab Partnership Brings ASU’s First Newsgame Workshop
February 27, 2013 in Blog
Read more »Gamestar Mechanic and Collaboration
December 20, 2012 in Blog
Gamestar Mechanic is not just about one person sitting at a computer creating their own game, although it can be. A big part of the Gamestar Mechanic experience is the interaction with other people. Since the most common application of the game is in a classroom setting, the player is rarely creating by themselves. The […]
Read more »Impact Games in Review: Assassin’s Creed III
December 20, 2012 in Blog
Developer: Ubisoft Release Date: October 30th, 2012 Availability: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii U Cost: $59.99 ESRB Rating: M (Mature) What’s it About? It is 2012 and the world is about to end. Desmond Miles, a modern-day assassin, is tasked with saving it, using a special virtual reality machine known as the Animus. Through this, […]
Read more »Gamestar Mechanic: A Game about Games
December 11, 2012 in Blog
Critical thinking, problem solving, and imagination important skills for kids today. Gamestar Mechanic, December’s game of the month, produced by E-Line Media, encourages players to use these these abilities to get through the game. At its core, Gamestar Mechanic is a game about games. In the first half, players learn how to play by being […]
Read more »Thinking with Portals — An Introduction to Valve’s Physics Puzzler
November 9, 2012 in Blog
November brings with it the next Game of the Month: Portal. Valve’s 2007 release and its 2011 sequel, Portal 2, place the player in control of protagonist Chell; a mysterious and silent test subject at Aperture Laboratories who wakes from a state of stasis at the start of the original Portal game. Made to complete […]
Read more »Impact Games in Review: Dishonored
November 7, 2012 in Blog
Developer: Arkane Studios Release Date: October 9th, 2012 Availability: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Cost: $59.99 ESRB Rating: M (Mature) What’s it About? Corvo Attano, Lord Protector of Dunwall’s Empress Jessamine Kaldwin, returns home for an assignment abroad only to bear witness to the brutal murder of the Empress by supernatural assassins. When he is found […]
Read more »Minecraft as a Tool for Teachers
October 26, 2012 in Blog
Over the last two weeks, we’ve introduced you to the ins and outs of Minecraft in terms of its gameplay and its impact. These, when combined, help to create a game that thrives in an educational setting, one that The Center for Games and Impact boasts as one of its core games. We focus deeply […]
Read more »Defining an Impact Game: Minecraft and Educational Relevancy
October 19, 2012 in Blog
This is part three in a three part series on defining Minecraft as an impact game. Did you miss the previous posts in the series? Check out Defining an Impact Game: Minecraft and Environmental Sustainability and Defining an Impact Game: Minecraft and Engaged Citizenship! Self-powered railroad using redstone circuitry. Decorating the inside of a small house […]
Read more »Differentiating Four Levels Of Engagement In Learning: The ICAP Hypothesis
October 18, 2012 in Blog, Uncategorized
CGI Q&A with ASU Fellow Dr. Michelene (Micki) Chi Professor, Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College Arizona State University CGI: Please tell me about your work and the ICAP hypothesis. Dr. Chi: I like to know about an area of research that has been a problem for many, many years. […]
Read more »Defining an Impact Game: Minecraft and Engaged Citizenship
October 17, 2012 in Blog
This is part two in a three part series on defining Minecraft as an impact game. Did you miss the first post in the series? Check out Defining an Impact Game: Minecraft and Environmental Sustainability! A server spawn point. Player created shops. When we apply engaged citizenship to games, we look at the different forms […]
Read more »Defining an Impact Game: Minecraft and Environmental Sustainability
October 16, 2012 in Blog
If you read last week’s post, then hopefully you have a better understanding of what Minecraft is and how it works as both a game and a source of learning and impact. Minecraft itself is a beautifully formless experience and we strive to encourage others to define it not only through looking at its gameplay […]
Read more »The Importance of Political Games
October 9, 2012 in Blog
With the Presidential Election only just a month away, it is important to look at the impact of political games on the election as well as how people learn about the election process. While political games of the past have been little more than new renditions of old games which include the faces or views […]
Read more »Attempting to answer the big question: What is Minecraft about?
October 9, 2012 in Blog
When talking about Minecraft, people tend to ask the same question: ‘What exactly is Minecraft?’ Sometimes they rephrase themselves by saying: ‘What is Minecraft about?’ The answer remains very much the same. Minecraft isn’t really about anything at all. As a first person, sandbox-based, open world game, Minecraft has no particular narrative. The gameplay is, at […]
Read more »Accidental Game Publishers: Foundations, Universities, Government and Non-Profits
Foundations, universities, government agencies and non-profits that fund games to further their learning, health and social impact goals are game publishers – and yet most do not realize it. These research and impact focused organizations did not set out to become game publishers and certainly do not consider themselves game publishers, but they have taken on all of the key functions of a game publisher.
Read more »Why Games?
Computer and video games have emerged as one of the most powerful mediums of the 21st Century, generating billions of hours of highly engaged entertainment and surpassing even the film industry in terms of revenues. A growing body of research is also highlighting the enormous potential of games to drive meaningful and measurable learning, health […]
Read more »Dr. James Paul Gee Delivers Keynote at Games for Change 2012
June 20, 2012 in Blog, News, Video
”Education is about creating human beings who are civic minded and feel that they count.” – Dr. James Paul Gee Watch Dr. Gee’s talk on creating “Big G” games for impact and how these games can change the way we approach education, society, and real world problem solving at 9th annual Games for Change festival […]
Read more »Playing for Impact: Ritual, ARGs, and IRL Change
“Reality is broken. Game designers can fix it.” So says JaneMcGonigal, game designer and researcher, when talking about her quest to use massive multiplayer gaming to solve social problems facing the world today. Her point is provocative and the argument is persuasive. However, it can be contended that the point is slightly different than the basic […]
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