Kotaku: Education

MinecraftEdu Distributes the Building Blocks of Games-Based Education to Classrooms Everywhere

Mike Fahey — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:20:00 EDT

Joel Levin at the Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School used popular indie block building game Minecraft as a learning tool for his second grade computer class. Now he's a part of the newly-launched MinecraftEdu, a program dedicated to spreading Minecraft-based learning to classrooms around the world. More »

You Might Be Able To Finish High School in Just a Single Year

Luke Plunkett — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 04:30:00 EDT

Sounds like an email spam subject line, I know, but it's actually a claim made by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. More »

The Best Apps for Turning Your iPad into an iPre-School

Mike Epstein — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EDT

Kids and iPads are a better fit than you'd think—as long as those little hands are clean. More »

Gabe Newell is Bringing Portal 2 to the Classroom

Mike Epstein — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 16:20:00 EDT

During his talk at the Games for Change festival today, Valve chief Gabe Newell mentioned that the company has begun working with schools to build a curriculum based on Portal 2. Check out our liveblog of the event for more. More »

Learn Physics The Angry Birds Way

Brian Crecente — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:20:00 EDT

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I'm a bit of a physics hobbyist. That doesn't mean that I understand or can even converse in the language of motion, but I love reading about it. More »

Kinectimals Creator Sets His Sights on Building the $25 PC

Owen Good — Thu, 05 May 2011 23:30:00 EDT

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David Braben, whose Frontier Developments studio has delivered Elite, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, LostWinds and, yes, Kinectimals, has now created Raspberry Pi. It's not a game, it's a working, Linux-based PC on something not much larger than a standard USB memory stick. More »

Study of 1980s Gamers Finds Them Less Likely to be College Graduates

Owen Good — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 21:30:00 EDT

A researcher at Oxford University queried adults who were 16 years old in 1986 and found a correlation between an interest in video gaming and a lower likelihood of going on to college. More »

Teaching First-Graders with Minecraft

Owen Good — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 18:00:00 EDT

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When his five-year-old daughter built a treehouse by herself in Minecraft, Joel Levin, a computer teacher at Manhattan's Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, got the idea to try incorporating the PC game into his lesson plan at school. He worried about numerous possibilities that the game would simply be incompatible with students that young, but he was relieved and gratified to discover he was wrong. More »

Today, Five Million Kids Are Playing One Game

Luke Plunkett — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 06:00:00 EST

Right now, there are over five million kids from all corners of the globe taking part in an online game. One you may have never even heard of. More »

Make a Game, Help Stop Teen Dating Violence

Brian Crecente — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:30:00 EST

Can you create a game about teen dating violence without using violence? More »

Over 800 Children Herded Together For Handheld Gaming

Brian Ashcraft — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 08:00:00 EST

If anyone wonders what a gathering of 800 people playing portable game consoles look like, it looks like this. Because that's exactly what happened this weekend in Odawara City in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture. More »

Forget Dragons, Japan's Biggest Quest Is For English

Brian Ashcraft — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 02:00:00 EST

While marveling at the scenery, soaking up pop music or playing video games, you can't miss it. In Japan, English is everywhere. And the country seems, at times, obsessed with learning it. More »

Games Makers At The Fore Of Science Education Push

Owen Good — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:40:00 EST

If you're asking industry heavyweights to make a video to fire up kids about math and science, it's probably no surprise that the video game maker is the one getting the most views. More »

What's Modern Warfare Doing In A Special Needs School?

Owen Good — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 17:00:00 EST

That's what parents near Sacramento, Calif., want to know and, you know, I do, too. More »

Teaching Our Schools To Up Their Game

Mike Fahey — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EDT

In this Finding Your Science video from the National Science Foundation Arizona State University linguist James Paul Gee discusses how schools kill the joy of learning and how video games can bring it back to life. More »

U.S. Education Secretary Not A Fan Of Xbox — Or Any Console

Owen Good — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:40:00 EDT

In a recent interview with the New York Times, the U.S. secretary of education touted his own TV-less upbringing before unloading the chicken-dinner applause line that he's "not a fan" and "absolutely" wouldn't get his kids an "Xbox." More »

School With Erotic Game Connection Is Changing Its Name

Brian Ashcraft — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EDT

A school in Japan's Yamagata Prefecture, Japan's largest cherry producer, discovered it had the same name as an erotic game brand. The city's mayor refused to change the name, but that was then. More »

This Grade School Has An Unfortunate Adult Game Connection

Brian Ashcraft — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:30:00 EDT

Japan's Yamagata Prefecture is Japan's biggest cherry producer. So naming a new learning institution "Sakuranbo Shougakkou" ("Cherry Elementary School") after the area's produce would make sense. That is, until you check the internet. More »

U. of Florida Adds Starcraft Studies

Owen Good — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:30:00 EDT

Starcraft is being used to teach resource management skills in a new course offering at the University of Florida - but it's only open to students in the honors college, and students have to have some familiarity with the game. More »

Portal Becomes Required Reading At Wabash College

Mike Fahey — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:20:00 EDT

Freshmen at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana this year will be required to read Gilgamesh, Aristotle's Politics, the poetry of John Donne, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Valve's Portal. More »

How A "Worthless" Degree Robbed A Stripper Of Her Video Game Love

Brian Ashcraft — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 05:00:00 EDT

Carrianne Howard studied game design. As Bloomberg previously reported, she ponied up US$70,000 for a "worthless" degree from a for-profit college. But Howard not only lost $70,000 on that degree, she also lost her love of video games. More »

Video Games, Strippers & Goldman Sachs

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 02:30:00 EDT

Carrianne Howard wanted to design video games, so she enrolled in a course at a for-profit college. She's ended up as a stripper. More »

Teaching Girls How To Handle Peer Pressure About Sex

Brian Ashcraft — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:00:00 EDT

On July 26, University of Central Florida was awarded a $434,800 National Institutes of Health grant to develop a game to promote abstinence among Latina middle school students, reports the Orlando Business Journal. More »

Pissed-Off Parents Find Math Game Too Violent for School

Owen Good — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:30:00 EDT

An action-packed math game students enjoy playing is a little too fun for some parents of the Albuquerque schools, one of whom went as far as accusing it of fostering video games addiction. More »

"Grace's Diary" Educates About, Explores Teen Dating Violence

Brian Crecente — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:00:00 EDT

Grace's Diary has players work their way through an interactive story, working to discover what happened to Grace and, perhaps, learning the danger signs of Teen Dating Violence. More »

Supreme Court Justice O'Connor Calls Games 'Fabulous'

Owen Good — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:20:00 EDT

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently spoke a word of charity for video games, telling ABC News in an interview that the medium's a "fabulous" way to get children to learn. More »

Army Schools to Offer Game Design Courses to Military Kids

Owen Good — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:30:00 EDT

American colleges and universities aren't the only ones who have noticed the appeal of games design courses; so has the Department of Defense, which will offer them in its vocational programs for kids of enlisted military and civilian workers. More »

Kick-Ass and the Ethics of Gameplay

Tanner Higgin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:00:00 EDT

The Need for Videogame Literacies More »

The Cub Scouts Get Video Game Badges

Owen Good — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 22:30:00 EDT

Scouting is no longer just about the outdoors - roughing it, blowing up a can of beef stew in a campfire or drinking kool-aid that tastes like chewable aspirin. The Cub Scouts are now awarding pins for video games. More »

Educator Claims 'Damning Evidence' Against Games, Offers Little

Owen Good — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:30:00 EDT

An evenhanded study last month about kids and schoolwork found "nothing evil about video games," but not a Kansas educator, who bootstraps those findings to his claim that games are responsible for the widening achievement gap between boys and girls. More »

Are You Addicted To Video Games?

Mike Fahey — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:20:00 EDT

Educational advertising, as effective as it ever was, as seen on the wall of a high school via Reddit. Makes me want to gel my hair up and break out the Xbox. More »

College Parties These Days Are Like This?

Brian Ashcraft — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:00:00 EDT

As seen on UK:R. More »

Warner Bros. Moves Onto Sesame Street

Mike Fahey — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:30:00 EST

Warner Bros. has inked a new deal with Sesame Workshop to develop and publish video games based on the Sesame Street license, hopefully bringing more Muppets to an industry deficient on google eyes and felt. More »

A School Where Kids Are Taught Through Video Games

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:30:00 EST

Last September, the Quest to Learn school opened in New York. It's aim? To educate kids almost entirely though the use of video games. More »

Obama And LittleBigPlanet Team Up, For Kids

Stephen Totilo — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:52:13 EST

The White House is announcing today a program to improve science and math education with a variety of Entertainment Software Association-backed initiatives including a program to put LittleBigPlanet in libraries as well as a $300,000 game design challenge. More »

Rockstar Presents: Music Lessons For Schoolkids

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:30:00 EST

Music students at New York City's East Side Community High School are throwing out their guitars, pianos and cowbells, with one program at the school instead teaching kids with PSPs and copies of Rockstar's Beaterator. More »

Texas Library Geeks Out with Consoles, Cosplay

Owen Good — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:00:00 EDT

I'm 35, and "teen summer reading program" sounds only slightly more fun than "adopt a highway," so, good luck firing up kids for that, right? Well, add cosplay and games and suddenly you're talking. More »

The Bestest College Webpage Ever

Brian Ashcraft — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:00:00 EDT

Pictures of student sitting under trees? Crowded libraries? Professors lecturing? Boring! A school campus in retro 8-bit? That's more like it. More »

Would You Quit School To Game Full Time?

Brian Ashcraft — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:00:00 EDT

School or Counter-Strike? Pick! Quick! Seventeen-year-old Swede Sophie "inzane" Regnér has. More »

Nintenducation – A New Take On Edutainment

AJ Glasser — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:30:00 EDT

It's a great time to be in grade school, if you live in Japan or Great Britain. Several dozen schools in both countries are putting Nintendo DSs in K-12 classes. More »