games – Dr. Ray Pastore's Instructional Technology Blog

Call of Duty gets $1 Billion in sales within 24hrs

admin — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 22:37:40 +0000

Nothing new here. Just a video game making more money than harry potter and twilight (maybe even combined) in one day. As the article here stats the biggest grossing movie took over a month to reach $1 billion in sales. That movie was avatar.

Parents: What you need to know about video games in the classroom

admin — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 11:51:49 +0000

Here is a great link from Wow in school that highlights a bunch of good resources for parents who are concerned about a ‘video’ game being used in their childs classroom. Even my undergrads just think video games are ‘mindless’ entertainment until I show them how games can be used to promote all types of learning objectives while motivating the students. Anyway here is the link: http://wowinschool.pbworks.com/w/page/5268739/Parental%20Involvement

Here is some same sources from the site that I really liked:

Tips for Smart Video Gaming – by Connect Safely
http://www.connectsafely.org/Safety-Tips/smart-tips-for-videogaming.html

Guide to Parental Controls on the XBox 360
http://www.getgamesmart.com/tools/setcontrols/

Powerful Play: A Mom and Son in World of Warcraft
http://www.netfamilynews.org/?p=31128

Why Kids Love Video Games and What Parents Can Do About It
http://www.netfamilynews.org/?p=31146

The Serious Need for Play – Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-serious-need-for-play

The Video Game Revolution (PBS Series)
http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/index.html

8 Myths About Video Games Debunked (by Henry Jenkins, MIT)
http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html

Nintendo going digital with next gen console

admin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:54:55 +0000

Looks like Nintendo will be joining the club and offering their games online. While they currently have an online store for the wii, this will offer normal retail games that normally require a disk. This is a good move for us consumers for many reasons. It will:

– Provide us with cheaper games (maybe?). Packaging has to increase game cost so if there is not packaging one can assume games will decrease in price.

– Give us instant access to games when they are released

– Games may run faster on SSD drives rather than having to spin via dvd.

– A bad thing: no more used games

– A bad thing: Need for large hard drives which may cause us to buy more

Here is a link to an article on the topic

Gamesalad: Game and App creator

admin — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:42:14 +0000

This is a great game creator for educators to create games for the ipad/iphone and android based devices. It’s free and only works on Macs at this point but PC might be coming soon. This software would be perfect for the classroom.

http://gamesalad.com/