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Games in Education Games are an ancient form of social interaction. Long before Gameboys and Xbox 360, young Sumerian children played the Royal Game of Ur deep in the heart of Mesopotamia. Games persisted and flourished as industrial age machinery became capable of churning out millions of monopoly and boggle games. But not since going digital has the cultural impact of games been so phenomenal. Yearly sales are well into the billions and for most it’s not a question of if you play games, but rather what percentage of your day is occupied by them. Undoubtedly the popularity is due to technological advances that allow digital games designers to present players with scenarios that take them to marvelous new worlds, challenge them with complex strategy and above all engage them deeply in an enjoyable experience. Can educators learn something from the popular medium? Should we be using games in education or perhaps letting game design inform our instructional design? Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Engage Me or Enrage Me: What Today's Learners Demand - Marc Prensky Genres - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_and_video_game_genres Gamespot - http://www.gamespot.com/ Pop Cap - http://www.popcap.com/ Crazy Monkey - http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/ Mini-Clip - www.miniclip.com Runescape - http://www.runescape.com/ Civilization - Civ III http://www.civ3.com/ Black & White - http://www.lionhead.com/bw2/ Second Life - http://secondlife.com/ America's Army - http://www.americasarmy.com/ New course teaches instructional gaming If you register at Innovate you can find more gaming related articles. Here are some titles: Marc Prensky's GamesParentsTeachers - http://www.gamesparentsteachers.com/ MuzzyLane - http://www.muzzylane.com/ Social Impact Games - http://www.socialimpactgames.com/ PullUIn - http://www.creaturecontrolscience.com/introduction.html Hazmat: First Person Responder - http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051102/carless_01b.shtml Cancer Games (A First Person Shooter game for kids) - Instant Messenger (MSN) - http://messenger.msn.com/Xp/Default.aspx America Online Instant Messenger - http://www.aim.com/ ICQ - http://www.icq.com/ Tapped In - http://tappedin.org/tappedin/index.jsp info about Tapped In http://hale.pepperdine.edu/~jamathie/classlist/TI.htm (def. at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_telephony ) Skype - http://www.skype.com/
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