David Neville has recently posted a prototype and development information for an SIE (synthetic immersive environment) he is creating for German.  It is available at: http://digibahn.blogspot.com/2011/04/download-game-prototype.html for those who are interested in checking it out or contributing to the project.  We haven’t spent much time with it, but thought some of you interested in game-mediated L2 education more broadly would be interested.

Thanks for sharing David!

-J. Sykes

Here’s an interesting discussion board thread on a public gamer website, NeoGAF. Someone asked “J’apprends le français. How can games help me learn a second language?“, and received over 100 replies in 5 days. Some respondents give game recommendations, some warn against it, some talk about how they’ve learned other languages using games, and of course, there’s some off-topic commentary. Check it out.

– J. Reinhardt

The RSA, Britain’s Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce,  has a series of enlightening videos that illustrate lectures on current topics. This lecture, on Changing Education Paradigms, is made by Sir Ken Robinson. While Sir Robinson doesn’t mention games as a future direction for education, we think that games have a prominent place in this new paradigm.

The New York Times Magazine this week has a special feature on Quest to Learn, the experimental school using an entirely digital games-mediated curriculum in New York City. A special Q & A answer session will be held on Sept. 20 with Jim Gee, who will also be speaking at the Cognitive Science Colloquium series here at U Arizona on Dec. 3.