|
|
|
|
Level Up Report
March 16, 2018
This coming week is the annual Game Developers Conference, a huge gathering of game creators that meets each year to discuss the state of the video game industry and find ways to push it forward. If you're planning to be at the show, I hope to see you there!
Thanks to Tracy Fullerton, Jacquie Gardy, Ben Sawyer, and Russell Shilling for contributions to this week's news! Send us YOUR news at news@levelup.org.
News
 Microsoft launched an extensive new report, "Closing the STEM Gap", with results from a survey of more than 6,000 girls and young women on their interests in STEM. Particularly noteworthy in the results is the significant impact that both encouragement from teachers and parents, and having role models, can make to girls' interest!
Want to understand more about the Next Generation Science Standards but having trouble making sense of the source material? THE Journal comes to the rescue with a five-minute introduction to NGSS.
In a new study of video games published in Nature's journal Molecular Psychiatry, adults that played Grand Theft Auto V each day for eight straight weeks showed "no significant changes" on a wide variety of behavioral measures.
Journalist Jeff Grubb details his attempts to create a financial meltdown in the "survivalist civilization simulator", Eco. The game from developer Strange Loop Games has a visual treatment similar to Minecraft but an extremely deep ecosystem simulator built into it. Jeff's story is pretty entertaining (as are his Tweets about it)!
 What if playing games could help you save money? That's the idea behind Blast, a micro-savings tool that uses in-game achievements to cue transfers from your checking account. Did you just lose a game of League of Legends? You can have Blast automatically transfer $5 to an FDIC-insured savings account. Players can also earn money by testing new games or competing on a weekly leaderboard.
What separates edtech "bad guys" from "good guys"? A group of teachers and instructional technologists met at SXSWedu to discuss what makes a technology product work well in the classroom. TL;DR: They liked Kahoot, Nearpod, Google's G Suite for Education, Canvas, Padlet, and Quizlet!
This Tuesday, join a webinar on the power of digital gaming for literacy, featuring the winning apps from the EduApp4Syria competition. Antura and the Letters, and Feed the Monster, are games designed to improve literacy and psychosocial wellbeing outcomes for children. Results of an impact evaluation have recently been released.
Raspberry Pi is getting an upgrade with the release of the new Pi 3 Model B+. With a faster processor, and vastly improved networking, it may just be the best single-board computer for your next project!
 I love stories like this one: fifth-grade students in Arkansas wanted to find a way to help first-grader Gracie Marvin to ride her new bicycle, a feat which was difficult for her due to being born without a right hand. They enlisted the help of ninth-grader Steicy Lopez and her 3D printer skills in order to meet the challenge!
With support from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and design collaboration from Dartmouth's Tiltfactor lab, Digitalmill has launched two free health-focused boardgames. Bill of Health and Gut Check each let the player explore important changes occurring in health and health care. Visit the PlayingWithHealth site to order your copies now!
The makers of Walden, a Game, have released a brand new curriculum guide. Walden is free to educators, so be sure to check out their site to learn more and download the guide. The game was Game of the Year at Games for Change 2017!
I enjoyed this thoughtful article from a father who looked forward to introducing his young son to the joy of playing competitive video games together. What he discovered instead was the creative world of Minecraft, and how to understand his son in new ways not allowed by the games from his own childhood.
Play
 Schemata (iOS, Android) – Learn about logic diagrams and gates through this high-speed learning game! You'll need to rapidly select the inputs to various gates to produce the proper output and move through these puzzles quickly. Video.
Soot Out at the 0 C Corral (iOS, Android) – Why is it that dirty snow melts faster, and what impact does soot from air pollution have on the Arctic environment as a result? From the EarthGames group at the University of Washington.
Chuchel (PC, Mac) – Help Chuchel and Kekel on their quest to retrieve a cherry from a band of other cute critters! This game defies explanation, to a certain extent... it's from the creators of Machinarium, so... it's kind of like that! Video.
Watch
 #GameOn - 88 Seconds of Video Games – Video games are so much more than what was depicted in the White House's 88-second video of violent scenes from games. Games for Change put together this lovely video of beautiful and touching scenes that remind of us what video games are capable of.
#Walkout @ Brooklyn Technical High School – New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says that over 100,000 NYC students participated in last week's #NeverAgain gun violence protests. Hear a few individual stories from students of Brooklyn Technical High School.
Amazing Pi Coincidence with Pie on Pi Day – This short video celebrating Pi Day does a great job visualizing the relationship between the circumference of a circle and its area. Nice!
Why Are You Glad You Grew Up When You Did? – Every generation thinks it had the best music, the best movies, the best... something. Ars Technica asked a group of people from a multitude of generations why they're glad they grew up when they did!
Sites to Follow
So. Many. Great. Things on the Internet! Here's a site I visit a lot: Gamasutra. The definitive site for game development news, from the same people who bring you the Game Developers Conference. Be sure to follow Gamasutra this week to stay on top of all the news coming out of the conference!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
