http://vgalt.com Innovation in Teaching, Learning, & Organizational Research Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:05:37 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Join vgAlt  at Humanities Matter! Conference Wyoming Humanities Council October 23-24 Central Wyoming College in Riverton. Learn about the successful use of virtual,  augmented, and alternate reality environments for instruction and enhancing student engagement. I will be presenting my experience and published research on  designing instructional space for sustained engagement,  extending instructional contact and learning, ... http://vgalt.com/2009/10/14/possible-worlds-learning-beliefs-and-instruction-in-real-and-virtual-worlds/ VIDEO GAMES, READING , AND TRANSMEDIAL COMPREHENSION. Games represent a high interest accessible medium to build comprehension, and in using games we can continue to engage in topics that are complex, provocative and motivating, and not often found in texts designed to be simplified for the sake of decoding. Games will ... http://vgalt.com/2009/10/13/reading-comprehension-as-a-transmedial-sub-medial-trait/ Dance Dance Education and Rites of Passage ---Lessons learned about the importance of play in sustaining engagement from a high school “girl gamer” based upon socio- and cultural-cognitive analysis for designing instructional environments to elicit and sustain engagement through identity construction. Brock Dubbels The Center for Cognitive Sciences, Reading Education The University ... http://vgalt.com/2009/10/11/dance-dance-education/ Think of toys as pivots-- as Vygotsky did, as well as prior posts on this site regarding play. Toys are representation,. where a child may imagine that they are participating in something imagined and fantastic that might otherwise be too dangerous to participate in or initially too difficult to do. ... http://vgalt.com/2009/10/06/old-fashioned-play-builds-serious-skills-assumptions-and-anecdote/ Summary: As losses continue to mount, price cuts remain slow to materialize and more and more blockbuster releases are delayed until 2010, the PC and video game industry finds itself at a crossroads. The big question: Will it power up in time to save itself from going the way of ... http://vgalt.com/2009/08/17/games-are-dead-long-live-gaming/ Freefalling sales. Skyrocketing unemployment. Studios tanking left and right. Tune in for the first of a special two-part series as we ask: Is it ‘game over’ for thousands of developers and publishers – and millions of fans – worldwide? This video segment came form Digital Trends and I thought it interesting ... http://vgalt.com/2009/08/11/is-it-%e2%80%98game-over%e2%80%99/ The Jekyll and Hyde Effect calls into question approaches to accountability and implementation of mandated approaches to research-validated techniques and assessment in classroom instruction. Dissonance between teachers core beliefs about student learning and these new mandates, as presented to them, may be creating two different identities, two different classrooms, and ... http://vgalt.com/2009/08/04/the-jekyll-and-hyde-effect-play-games-and-learning-in-the-classroom-professional-identities-torn-asunder/ In this post, Ross Smith, Director of Test, Windows Security, at Microsoft, and one of the authors of The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention (Microsoft Press, 2007), describes the groundwork on their approach to using games as a tool for productivity and defect prevention through Portfolio Selection, Game Theory and ... http://vgalt.com/2009/07/31/games-and-play-for-productivity-and-defect-prevention/ Get Ready for EAT-IT For two days in August we will be examining the state of the art in educational uses of new and emerging technologies in education. Come to the campus of Inver Hills Community College in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota (southeast suburb of St. Paul) for a focused ... http://vgalt.com/2009/07/25/eat-it-innovations-in-technologies-conference/ Make sure that you come to Games in Education New York August 5th and 6th! This event is well worth the trip just for the networking. This is my third year participating in this conference, and every year the bar is raised with excellent speakers, useful and illuminating workshops, and excellent hosts. Check out ... http://vgalt.com/2009/07/23/games-in-education-conference-2009/