Three
recently released reports stress the need to embrace online and digital games
as ways to engage students, personalize learning and gauge student success.
The report Learner at the Center of a Networked World, produced by the
Aspen Institute Task Force on Learning and the Internet and released on June
17, is a cross-sector, cross-partisan report that calls for rethinking learning
systems that are currently too bound by time, place and old ways of doing
business. The report shifts the traditional focus from one institution, the
school, to a focus on the learner and all the places where the learner can
advance academically and pursue his or her interests.
Games and
Learning, in the article The
Game Developer’s Guide to the New Aspen Institute Education Report, pulls a
few areas that game developers may want to pay special attention to if they are
developing educational products.
NMC Horizon Report- 2014 K-12
Edition
The NMC and the Consortium for School
Networking (CoSN), with the support of HP, released the NMC Horizon Report >
2014 K-12 Edition. This sixth K-12 edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing
research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely
to have an impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in education.
This year’s report identifies BYOD and cloud
computing as technologies expected to enter mainstream use in the first horizon
of one year or less. Games and Learning Analytics are seen in the second
horizon of two to three years; The Internet of Things and wearable technology
are seen emerging in the third horizon of four to five years.
Navigating
the Ed-Tech Marketplace Report
Under the topic “Digital-Content Providers Expanding
Their Reach”, the report highlights that in in March, New York City-based
Amplify staged a high-profile launch of its new all-digital English/Language Arts
curriculum for middle grades that makes extensive use of learning games and is
powered by an adaptive-software engine that tailors content for each student
(also object of my previous post Serious Games Take ELA Learning To New Heights).