People used to shun games now they ‘tion them

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This title People used to shun games now they ‘tion them is something I tweeted to @TheKevinDent when he was riffing on the use of games being referred to as gamification by adding fication to common task was doing. I was joining in identifying that there is a rush towards games being acceptable, yet at the [...]

The future of tech education – ICT upgrades to open source

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In the final show of Cool Stuff Collective series 3 I put forward my wish for 2012, which actually occurs at 20:12 in the show that ICT in schools needed a revamp (there a few days left before this rotates from the player, I don’t have the rights to youtube it AFIAK yet). Now I am [...]

ICT education is not what we need – Official

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Today, as you will have noticed from twitter, the UK government (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) has published “The Government’s response to Next Gen. Transforming the UK into the world’s leading talent hub for the video games and visual effects industries”.
The next gen report was originally written by Ian Livingstone and Alex Hope and is [...]

Spot the difference – Kids virtual worlds

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Predlet 1.0 introduced me to a new website/virtual world/game that her friends had been playing the other day. It is called Bin Weevils. There are clearly a lot of interesting things coming along all the time but I was struck but the almost complete similarity between this and Moshi Monsters
It has comedy and education linked, many [...]

Physical to Digital with LEGO – Life of George

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There is a definite theme of physical toy and game interaction emerging. An interesting one that appeared recently is LEGO Life of George. This comes with a build platform for LEGO bricks and a app that is used to identify your creations through the camera, which in turn unlocks new things in the app.
The video is [...]

More practical science in education – Let’s hope so!

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Today a report came out from the UK government select committee on Science and Technology looking into the apparent lack of practical science work in schools that will create the next generation of scientists . It is heartening to see that the problem of a lack of practical science in schools has been identified. It is [...]

Talking careers, games, TV, BCS and Virtual worlds in 5 mins

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At the Develop conference this year I was asked if I minded doing a quick interview for http://www.gamecareers.biz/ so I popped along and this is the result.

We had a very quick chat before and then we just blasted through in 1 take
I am in good company if you look at the actual site here
Between Colin [...]

Inclusive gaming – An inspirational project

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At Develop last month I got talking to the guys on the stand for the SpecialEffect loan library project 2011-2013. @SpecialEffect is a charity which aim to make all games accessible to everyone. The library aspect is to provide specialist controllers, emrging technology solution and software patches for young people with vary degrees of accessibility issues [...]

Virtual campus tours for students

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I know that if I need to check out somewhere or something new I try and experience it in as many ways as the computer in front of me will allow. We used to just have to sit and paw through prospectuses for places before deciding to visit and check out a place (which is quite [...]

Identity is not binary – plusgate

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I have to join in with support for those people out there who wish to use a pseudonym or handle to express themselves on the internet. This is all sparked out of the apparent short sightedness of Google and it Google+ on suggesting that if you don’t use your “real” name you can’t be on the [...]