Out and About: Talk’n About Games

Pictured from Left to Right are Karl Kapp, Greg Walsh and Steve Sugar. Three guys talking about games (apparently arranged by height).

Recently I had the pleasure of presenting on the topic of games with two interesting and exciting gentleman. One was Steve Sugar who has written a half-a-dozen books on what he calls “19th century games.” Steve has developed board games, games where you toss koosh balls, bingo games and just about any other type of fun, educational game you can think of. He is a great presenter and I had a blast with him. Visit Steve at his web site, The Game Group.

Steve spoke about the 10 reasons games are such good tools for learning. You can read about them on this post The Value of Games

Also on the agenda was a former student of mine, Greg Walsh. He is so knowledgeable about interactive technologies and game design. He did an excellent job explaining the steps from the concept of a game to its final online version. You can visit Greg at his web site GregWalsh.com. He talks a bit about the presentation on his blog and provides a Link.

My job was to start the talk about games for learning. I discussed the generation of gamers and what their learning expectations are. The highlight for me was when an audience member came up afterwards and said, “you opened my eyes to video games, I used to think they were all bad but now I know they can be used for learning as well.” Mission accomplished.

True…games are just a method of delivering content, in and of themselves they are not good or bad. Just remember to match the type of learning to the type of game.

Thanks to Dr. Greg Williams, Director and Clinical Assistant Professor University of Maryland,Baltimore County, for setting up the event.
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