Education

New Media Capture and Delivery System Gives Users Immersive “Experiences”

Experience Media Studios today announced the worldwide launch of its patent-pending 3DPOV® system, a pioneering new solution for capturing, delivering, and experiencing immersive media.

Experience Media Studios’ 3DPOV® system enables the capture of a three-dimensional visual and auditory experience from the first-person perspective. 3DPOV® media delivers a higher level of sensory engagement than virtual reality that replicates a true-to-life binocular and peripheral visual field and a stereophonic auditory experience.

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SimCityEDU: Using Games for Formative Assessment

As game-based learning gains momentum in education circles, teachers increasingly want substantive proof that games are helpful for learning. The game-makers at the non-profit GlassLab are hoping to do this with the popular video game SimCity.

GlassLab is working with commercial game companies, assessment experts, and those versed in digital classrooms to build SimCityEDU, a downloadable game designed for sixth graders. Scheduled to be be released in the fall of 2013, it builds on SimCity’s city management theme, but provides specific challenges to players in the subject of STEM.

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After-School Program Exposes Students to Virtual Reality

CEDAR FALLS — The teeth of a John Deere combine poke out into a dark theater.

Students raise their arms and try to touch the behemoth as it floats what seems like inches from their faces. But their efforts are futile. Their hands can’t grasp the 3-D image on the screen in front of them. But their imaginations can.

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Video Game Teaches Blind People to Navigate Buildings

Image: Rendering of physical environment represented in the AbES software; in gamer mode, the player (yellow icon) navigates through the virtual environment using auditory cues to locate hidden jewels (blue squares) and avoid being caught by chasing monsters (red icons).

Blind people can learn the spatial layout of an unfamiliar building using a novel “video game” virtual reality environment that employs only audio-based cues, thus enabling them to learn skills that may improve functional independence, say US and Chilean scientists.

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In ‘Kinect Sesame Street TV’ On Xbox, The TV Talks Back To Kids

NEW YORK (AP) — Elmo, Big Bird and the rest of the “Sesame Street” crew have always talked to kids. Now, they’ll try to have a two-way conversation with their pint-sized audience using Kinect, the motion and voice-sensing controller created by Microsoft.

“Kinect Sesame Street TV,” out Tuesday, is not exactly a video game, though it runs on the Xbox 360 video game system. There are no winners and losers, no real rules to follow and no points to score. If you don’t want to play, that’s fine. Just sit back and watch “Sesame Street,” as kids have for the past 43 years. But if you do play, Grover will count coconuts you’ve thrown, the Count will praise you for standing still and Elmo will catch a talking ball if you throw it to him.

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20 Coolest Augmented Reality Experiments in Education So Far

Augmented reality is exactly what the name implies — a medium through which the known world fuses with current technology to create a uniquely blended interactive experience. While still more or less a nascent entity in the frequently Luddite education industry, more and more teachers, researchers, and developers contribute their ideas and inventions towards the cause of more interactive learning environments. Many of these result in some of the most creative, engaging experiences imaginable, and as adherence grows, so too will students of all ages.

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20 Educational Games That Were Ahead of Their Time

While there has been a surge in the acceptance and prevalence of game-based learning in schools over the past decade, especially in light of the success of programs like Khan Academy, playing games in the classroom is nothing new. Educational games have been a commonplace part of the K-12 experience since the beginning of the 1980s (and in some places well before that), with early titles introducing students to fundamental math, history, and problem solving concepts just as games do today. While the graphics may not have been great, the games helped to engage a generation of kids with technology and laid a solid foundation for the educational games that were to come.

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Minnesota School District Uses Telepresence to Offer Low-Demand Subjects

Image: Anoka-Hennepin school district technical support staffers interact from Andover High School with teachers at Blaine High School on the large wall monitors in a telepresence technology presentation Aug. 23, 2012. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

Anoka-Hennepin ‘telepresence’ allows low-demand subjects to be offered

A handful of classrooms in Anoka-Hennepin high schools might appear equipped for surveillance rather than teaching to students returning from summer vacation next week.

Six giant flat-screens span the space where a podium might otherwise be, and long, semi-circular tables outfitted with built-in microphones stand in place of traditional desks. The rest of the space is empty, devoid of even a single poster on the walls.

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50 Best Twitter Feeds to Follow Educational Gaming

It always seems like the media and parent groups want to rush after video games in a flurry of pitchforks and torches for the allegedly horrendous influence they hold over the youth of today. Debate is great, of course, but in reality, gaming actually holds some amazing, engaging benefits perfect for the educational setting. Game-based learning continues fascinating edtech enthusiasts, who eagerly flock to social media to share their developments, research, designs, and strategies. And a few of them are listed here in no particular order.

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Harry Potter ‘Book of Spells’ Will Come to Life via Sony

J.K. Rowling’s ‘Book of Spells’ will allow players to wave wands and cast spells using Wonderbook technology.

It’s being called the reinvention of the storybook.

At a Monday announcement at the annual video game conference known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, Sony Entertainment of America announced J.K. Rowling’s “Wonderbook: Book of Spells,” an interactive spell book that comes alive on PlayStation 3 videogame consoles.

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