Class Seven

June 20, 2012

Class Notes...

Gaming
- Good if it's purposeful
- Bad for special education kids because it's hard to get them back
- Big to some people and not others
- Tendency targeted towards males
- 2nd Life Game: recreated places and events
- Example: the tsunami, colleges, Michaelangelo's 16th Chapel

TED (Technology Entertainment Design) Video
- Organization that runs talks for educators
- Speaker: Jane McGonagal
- 3 billion hours a week playing online games
- Claims we need 21 billion hours a week of game play
- Solve obesity
- Camera set up in front of gamers
- Epic win: an outcome that is so extraordinarily possible and you are shocked when you get there and win
- Why we are better at games than in real life
- We achieve more in game world
- Inspired to collaborate and cooperate
- In game world we are able to overcome things VS real life we shutdown with problems
- 10,000 hours gaming by the age of 21

Big question: what exactly are gamers getting so good at?
1) Urgent optimism: the desire to act immediately in the belief there is hope of success
2) Social fabric: we like people better after we've played a game with them, even if they beat us, builds up bonds, trust, and cooperation
3) Blissful productivity: happier working hard
4) Epic meaning: love to be attached to awe aspiring missions

- Super empowered hopeful individuals: people who believe they are capable of changing virtual worlds, not the real worlds
- The problem she is trying to solve
- We are using games to escape the real world environment
- Created real world game scenarios
- Oil, Human Extinction, Evoke
- Hope to play games that matter
- We can make any future

Gaming...
Free Rice
freerice.com
I love this website. It’s cute and simple. It also really makes you think. I found that I was better at the Spanish category then any other. Which is funny because I haven’t taken Spanish since high school. But having a variety of different categories does make it more fun and you are working towards a good cause of donating rice to help end hunger.

Fat World
http://fatworld.org
I was depressed by this game! It made sad to have to choose the weight of my character and of course whatever selection you choose your character becomes either thinner or fatter. I chose average because I would be too embarrassed to pick the other ones! Then having to pick socioeconomic status. I mean come on! I picked poor because I wanted to see what happened when you chose that. It kind of reminded me of the games The Sims, but much harder to navigate. My character walked very slowly and I had trouble entering places. But I like the idea of it. I think it would be beneficial for students to play on because it teaches them about nutrition and spending money. It might work for an older elementary school age group.

Hot Math
http://hotmath.com/hotmath_help/games/kp/kp_hotmath_sound.swf
I literally laughed out loud when I was playing this game. First off because the concept is hilarious, you need to kill a cockroach by entering the correct answer. Second off because the music was amusing, it sounded like cockroaches on parade. Third off because it showed how terrible I am at x and y integers. If that’s even what they’re called! This game would be fun for students learning math in that specific area. The fast paced game makes them think on their feet and if they get the answer right they get the satisfaction of killing a cockroach. No one likes cockroaches.

I also found this additional website on various educational games!
http://www.cookie.com/kids/games/viewallgames.html