Sandbox Summit - Game On! How Playful Learning Works
April 17, 2012
Sandbox Summit - Going Mobile/Going Global: Tracking the anywhere/everywhere state of play
Game On! How Playful Learning Works
Alex Games, Ph.D., Education Design Director, Microsoft
Kodu, a game-based learning environment is designed to introduce children to
computational thinking and programming, giving them identities as game designers
within online communities. The presentation will discuss the way in which Kodu allows
young learners to use their experience as gamers to explore the key computational
principles, thinking, and activities in computer science and engineering that lie “under
the hood” of modern videogames. Alex will present examples of how this model has
been used in the context of after school programs, and the ways in which it promises
to transform the way in which children engage with STEM, by allowing them to use
games as a language that gives meaning and value to concepts that schools tend to
present in academic and decontextualized ways.
credit
Sandbox Summit
