Carney’s Clark Aldrich Interviews on Simulations and Serious Games
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Carney about simulations and serious games. Here is part one and part two.
ClarkChart is the fastest growing database of educational simulations and serious games
Serious Play 2013 Winners
LOS ANGELES – Aug. 28, 2013 – MIT Game Lab’s education game, Phantomation, won Best of Show in the 2013 International Serious Play Awards competition. Seven other studios won gold medals. The awards, announced at the 2013 Serious Play Conference at DigiPen Institute of Technology, honor exceptional examples of corporate, military, children’s educat...
National sponsors needed to help distribute new simulation on “Getting Veterans Back to Work”
Here is an important message from Sharon Sloane, President and CEO, WILL Interactive,Inc.: Dear Colleagues and Friends, As you may be aware, last year WILL initiated a philanthropic initiative to help veterans reintegrate into the civilian workforce. The ‘Simulate a Better World Challenge’ was launched with an all star panel of judges, ...
The Five Waves of Serious Games
Computer based serious games have had a rich, if brief, history to date. As with any media, the industry is replete with milestones, such as these: http://www.clarkchart.com/tag/milestone/. I see five overlapping waves. While we may call The Oregon Trail (1971) the first “serious game”, the first wave of serious games would still...
How to get involved
ClarkChart has already helped many organizations find the right sim, developer, even toolkit. But I have also received emails letting me know that a favorite sim is not on The Chart, or that some information is incomplete, or they want to otherwise offer assistance. I say, great. Here are a few different ways you can help: Leave comments. If you h...
Learning Goals – Learning to Be, Learning to Do, Learning to Know
With the explosion of media available, including Web 2.0 and computer games, people now assume they will achieve three overlapping learning goals in everything from life to high school to the first day on the new job. They are: first, learning to be. Then, learning to do. Finally, learning to know. Learning to Be: Social Networks and Communi...
Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome weighs in on “Sims” vs. “Serious Game” Babel Problem
I wrote in The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games (Pfeiffer, October 12, 2009) about what I called “The Babel Problem.” Here is an excerpt: The Babel Problem—“Serious Games” or “Educational Simulations” As noted, the focus of this book is to present common definitions of concepts and terms that apply to Sims. The lack of c...
Inside Learning Technologies & Skills: Four Articles
Today, my fourth article for the British magazine Inside Learning Technologies & Skills came out. The three so far were (and click on title to download pdf): Why Educational Simulations? Designs to Develop Competence Plus Conviction: This outlines the most important reasons for pursuing simulations and serious games, and some some design framew...
Using Flow in Sim Design
The optimal learning state is that of being in “flow.” The term, coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [Csikszentmihalyi, M (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimum experience. New York: Harper Perennial.], refers to a mental state of immersion and clarity. This is analogous to when athletes refer to themselves as “being in the zone;” and t...
How would Steve Jobs do training and education?
I was asked by a certain company a question. How would Steve Jobs do training? The New Old Software Development My first answer is the bottom right of the three charts. In terms of software (and hardware) development, the simplest answer is 1) Create tools that don’t need training. Use skeuomorphic designs. Provide rich feedback. Use icon...
My WAMC Northeast Public Radio Interview on Simulations and Serious Games
Click here to hear the interview.
Sim designer tip: The best subject matter experts talk in visual metaphors.
Some very smart people use a lot of very big, intellectual, and conceptually precise words and phrases to describe a situation (such as “Orthogonal” and “Force multiplier”). Others may introduce classic metaphors (such as “Manifest Destiny” and “The Sword of Damocles”), often based on cultural litera...
