Posts Tagged ‘video’
Educational videogames
The use of educational games, e-learning and videogames in school education became one of the main objectives of many research centres around the world.
In United States Microsoft, Columbia University and New York University had started a partnership with the Games for learning institute, to conduct different researches on educational games, e-learning and videogames.
In Europe the need for an implementation of new educational tools in school education is the new scientific research’s challenge.
The aim of all these organizations is to conduct differnet researches on the use of games, e-learning and videogames as learning tools, trying to find the perfect implementation of these new digital tools in school education.
The European Schoolnet recently completed a survey project called Games in School, developed to analyze the use of educational videogames in European schools.
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Germany,
This summer instead of going on holidays, a group of researchers from the University of Trier in Rhineland-Palatinate, studied the experimental introduction of chess in elementary school for the new academic year.
The results show that 6 years old children that have begun to learn how to playchess learn more easly not only math but also German grammar.
In other words researchers proved that children who play chess are doing better during all the years of the primary school.
For this reason chess are now considered as an established educational method in Germany’s primary schools.
Chess help children develop logic and represents a great workout for their brain; chess can also useful to facilitate the integration of foreign scholars (more than eight million students in Germany are immigrants or children of immigrants).
This new method of using chess to improve students’ performances in traditional disciplines like grammar and math is now used in all the primary schools of the Germany.
The biggest problems for the teachers was when children learned how to play chess and started to beat them. We must say that this a clear evidence of how the pupils can overcome their masters.
For this reason now teachers are assisted by regular chess players during the “chess hours”.
I don’t know if you live in Germany or not, the fact is that scientific evidences show that chess are a great educational game and can help children to develop not only math capabilities, but also grammar and literacy skills.
The video below shows World Chess Champion Susan Polgar playing chess vs. the young students of a German school.
- In: Curiosities | History
- 1 Comment
Modern reproduction of the ancient Mesoamerican ball game
The Mesoamerican ball game was a sport practiced by ancient Pre-Columbian cultures of Central America.
More than 3000 years ago The Mesoamerican ball game was very popular, the Maya called it pitsl, the Aztec name was ullamaliztl, but the game is the same.
This game was played with heavy rubber balls in open ended ball courts of different size with two vertical stone rings, one for each side of the court.
The aim of the game was to pass the ball in the stone goal and score the point.
We don’t know exactly the rules of this anciet game, but we know that Mesoamerican ball game could be really violent. In fact some games were played just for fun and recreation, some others were part of a ritual involving human sacrifice; for this occasions the game was played in Huge ball courts by two team of captives and the losers were sacrificed in a mystic/religious ritual.
The importance of the Mesoamerican ball game in ancient Pre-Columbian society is proved by all the diufferent use this game by the Maya: the ball game was used as a recreational sport, as part of a spiritual ritual and as well to solve the disputes among tribes and prevent the warfare.
Sometimes head of tribes play (but was more like a fight) the ball game to re-establish tribes hierarchy, and impose supremacy; this game was so important because it was like a social conflicts relief valve, it was a place where the disputes could be solved with a ball game match instead of a battle.
Probably the spiritual symbolism behind the ball game is the reason of the human sacrifices: the bal represents the sun and the scoring rings the sunrise; the solar movement is tied on fertility and the sacrifice of the player is the ritual of the death and the reborn of the sun. The game was a battle between day and night, born and death, life and the underworld.
This video is a modern reproduction of the ancient Mesoamerican ball game and of the Maya ball game rituals
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Math games for children
Posted on: July 18, 2009
All the games are based on math, there’s not sport match without a score or a dice without numbers.
Board and card games need math and players have to do different calculations during a game.
For this reason math games can be, especially for children, a great Mathematics Teaching Method.
Every educator knows how difficult is teaching math to kids, and how many times he have to repeat the same concept before all the students understand it.
Using board games, like the one in the video below, is a nice trick to make some difficult mathematics principles easier to understand.
Arithmetic, geometry, algebra, there are different games for each subject to keep the mind of the kids focused on the lesson topic. Fun and math are really distant concepts in our minds because of the way we have been educated, what if we can make math lessons funny for the kids instead of boring?
When children have fun, they are more open to learn difficult math calculations, on the contrary when kids become bored they tend to lose their attention.
Math games can be the answer to this fundamental teaching problem and a very useful educational tool for kids of all ages.
The video below shows how kids can practice money values with a nice and funnyboard game.
Math is boring because sometimes kids find it hard, but math should not be a problem for any child and this is the reason why games can make math easier to understand.
Every child will love math if he enjoys the lessons!
more math games
The essential components for a good education are reading, writing and basic computational skills.
Among these three reading is considered the most important. It’s necessary to use creativity and patience to teach reading to children.
Nowadays, with internet and others media invading our lives, the pleasure of reading a book seems lost. However, present and past studies show the importance that reading has in student success rates and also prove that forcing children to read yields poor results.
A new approach to this problem is needed to find a new and more effective method of teaching reading.
When you teach child reading, you should use variety of methods and resources for a well-rounded education.
Some educators obtained great results using educational games :
A lot of methods of teaching reading includes reading games and clever gaming situations to help children memorize letters and familiarize with the language.
Kids learn more when they enjoy the educational experience, that’s why reading games are really effective to improve their skills.
For a kid, a boring standard lesson can’t be catchy as playing a reading game, and this is the reason why fun learning is more effective and interesting than old teaching methods.
Also the contribute of the family is important , but the teacher’s methods are crucial to create an overall educational experience.
The video below shows how reading games for kids can be used; a specific game could provide oral reading, another one could teach how to share the contents with the group, another one could involve the class into a recital.
The “Crazy Professor” video shows a game based reading seminar adopted by many American schools to develop reading comprehension among their young students.
This a clear evidence of how educational games can help children to learn the language and enjoy their reading lessons.
- In: board games | Curiosities | Educational | History
- 2 Comments
In ancient Greece, board games where very popular, especially among the philosophers and their pupils. Plato once said “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation”.
Hellenistic culture gave a lot of importance to games, ancient Greeks invented the Olympics and athletes were considered like heroes.
Philosopher used to teach their scholars using linguistic game and games simulations; philosophy itself was a form of game: to quote Plato once again Philosophy is “like playing an hard game”.
Like Dutch philosopher J. Huizinga suggests In his book ”Homo ludens” all the stages and the development of philosophy manifest a recreational linguistic activity in its deep essence: Philosophic rhetoric play on words during the debates and the clash between the debaters assumed in public speeches the form of a win or lose game. Even in the written form, many ancient Greeks script are a sophistic game of question an answer.
Word games and speech competitions where a sort of recreational activity, used by Hellenic people to shape and rule their ancient society.The winners of those linguistic games where often famous philosophers like Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, great politicians like Themistocles and genial playwrights like Aristophanes.
This fundamental role of playing activities in the Hellenistic culture is manifested also in the Mythology, like in the Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.
The Labyrinth and the Theseus myth seems like a perfect representation of a gaming scenario that today could be easily used to develop a videogame:
Theseus (the player) must overcome different stages in a labyrinth scenario to fight and defeat the final Minotaur monster.
The connection between this myth and gaming was so strong that ancient Greeks invented a board game version of this myth called “labyrinth”, a game for two, three or four players.
Like in the original Myth, the gameboard represents the labyrinth of King Minos where the monster half men and half animal is trapped. The player acting as Theseus must save the youths Athenians sent as tribute to King Minos who used them to feed the Minotaur.
Each player has 4 pawns, one for each youth Athenian, the first player to bear off all the pieces at the centre of the board is the winner because, like Theseus, he has saved all the youths Athenians from certain death.
The word advergame derives from the fusion of the words advertising and game.
Advertgames are interactive games created to broadcast commercial messages, develop the brand awareness and bring traffic to consumer oriented websites.
The advergame marketing strategy begun in USA in 1998 when the firsts advertising expert start to test an different ways to promote their partners’ products.
The goal was to find a way to reach the audience and avoid the risk of annoying them with boring messages.
And the advert game was the perfect tool for this job because of its addicting and viral nature.
Was soon clear thar Advertgames can capture the target attention and create a more involved and complex relationship. In this way people remember the games and the products and advertisers push their brands.
Brand awareness, retention, brand loyalty and all the others marketing concepts shaped advergames through these Years.
Nowadays there are different advergames categories for different types of products and markets.
the most interestings are:
- Health advergames, created to reach the cosumer and built the brand equity of a pharmaceuticals industry;
- Exergames , developed to teach the children like Disney’s Hig School Musical Dance Math;
- Healthy behaviour games, like the one sponsored by Anderson Cancer Centre in Huston, who ordered a 32 million dollars anti-smoking videogame.
This last category shows how advergames can be used by media educators to inform, entertain and teach.
Brand engagement leads, are you ready to get in the advert-game?
- In: Curiosities | Educational | Psychology | Role Games | Train Your Brain
- 7 Comments
Recreational attitude has an eclectic and a multiform nature, a fluid ad dynamic structure that can change anytime when different inputs or actions are involved in the game.
Games dynamics studies have to focus their attention on social and psychological aspects involved during the games’ performances.
During a football game, a tennis match, a chess game, or just during hide and seek always important aspects of the human nature are involved and challenged.
This is the reason why For social science and psychology these gaming situation are an important field of study and represent an opportunity to develop theories and experimental games for study purposes.
For example games, role playing and recreational activities are widely used in management training and Human resource assessments with great results.
During special types of psychological games is very difficult to fake and that’s why H&R experts can understand a lot about a person after few minutes of playing.
Games are important for team building and mutual trust development.
An example of team building game to develop in few time mutual trust among members of a new group is the game of the fall:
Each member step on a chair, flop down backwards and the other members of the team take him and lift him up.
there are a lot of different trust games that can be played for an educational and proactive approach to team building studies, in this video a youth group of scholars play the trust game falling from the teacher’s desk.
This is a good school!
Art,gaming, recreational activities, interaction with the artefacts and a lot of fun all in one great exhibition at the Tate Modern Gallery of London.
Bodymotionspacesthings, born from creative thought of Robert Morris, is the ultimate great art installation in the Tate Modern Gallery of London.
The visitor can use in a recreational way all the installations of the artist and play in a sort of art in progress path, an endless game where people are a part of a bigger artistic creation always different because manipulated by its users.
In Robert Morris recreational art installation, you can climb, you can run, drift and jump while you are contemplating a fascinating art creation, a game which always includes everyone in its artistic representation.
Due to the big success of Bodymotionspacesthings, Tate Modern Gallery extended the exhibition until 14 June 2009 and the entrance is free!
I recommend this clever gaming experience to everyone!
To get an Idea of what Bodymotionspacesthings really is watch this video and have some fun!
John Lennon views on mind games
Posted on: May 30, 2009
- In: Curiosities | Educational | History
- 1 Comment
Today I would like to make a tribute to a music legend of the past: John Lennon, probably one of the greatest artist of the last century, and to one of his best soloist songs: Mind Games, which is also the title of the album released in 1973 that bring back John Lennon‘s music on the emotional Pop-Rock sound.
Mind Games is not so famous like Imagine or other big hits of Lennon, but I think it’s one of the most interesting Lennon’s soloist works. Originally entitled make “Make Love, Not War”, like the famous slogan against the war in Vietnam, Mind Games is another masterpiece deeply related to the pacifist hymn “Give Peace A Chance”.
Mind Games stands for the possibility of use our own brightness to change the world, like Lennon did, using his fame to protest against the war and defend world peace. Mind Games is another great artistic prove of Lennon‘s commitment, explicitly declared in the last ironic sentence of the song: I want you to make love, not war, I know you’ve heard it before.
Games for your mind is all about that feeling so well expressed in this beautifull song: love not war, education not violence, free thoughts not manipulation, fair play not romp.
Playing Clever games together today to paint a brighter tomorrow!
Games for your mind 
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