Tuesday, January 11, 2011

LWF11 - David Samuelson, EVP, Director of Games & Augmented Reality

Learning Games

About a third of the company's revenue now comes from electronic/online sources. Talked about the company's history in ePublishing and stressed that the were trying to much more than create pdf versions of print books.

There was a brief mention of Flow - the focus and single-minded dedication often seen in gaming.

Poptropica - a virtual world where 320 million avatars created since its launch. Some of the islands are more overtly educational than others. Children also make movies of what they do- they are keen to show what they know and share what they know.

The generation that grew up with video games in the 80s and 90s are the ones that are now "in charge". "If children can't learn the way we teach, perhaps we should teach the way they learn." - Ignacio Estrada. Link with statistic from the Nintendo presentation because not only are females are in the majority as gamers but often they are the primary educator in the home too.

It's about mashups. Can great games be mashed up with great education. Mashups can be messy but important to experiment. A good example is Quest To Learn.

Ladybird ebook app. Story telling is an important part of learning.

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