Madde Uses the Internet

Erosion // Jamie Oliveira  (via bundleofstring)

whoops

words to use instead of “OCD”

Can educational video games be more than chocolate-covered broccoli?

A lot of people have tried to make video games that were both educational and fun, but ended up being neither.

These chocolate-covered broccoli games take school work and try to cover it up with the (sugary sweet) disguise of a video game.

Typically in these edu-games, students are given a “drill and practice” exercise —like repetitive math problems— and once the task is completed, they get to play a quick shooting game. The educational bits and the game play are completely separate. The assumption behind this type of game design is that learning is unpleasant, so we’re going to sugar-coat it by letting you play a game afterwards.

So how do we make educational games better?

The key is to understand what makes video games engaging in the first place. The relationship between a player and a game is different than the relationship between a reader and book. The game challenges you. It calls you out. It makes you experiment. 

And a good educational video game goes beyond flashy graphics. It creates a virtual environment that is open-ended and allows for more than one way to solve a problem in the game, according to Amy Bruckman, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

UC San Diego researchers are embracing this idea with their game, CodeSpells. The storyline is simple: you’re a wizard that uses spells (i.e. code) to navigate through the world, fight off foes and complete quests.

Unlike earlier digital games, the educational part (learning how to program) is inseparable from the game play (casting some truly devastating spells). The game world is immersive: a virtual place that players can explore, learn and experiment with your spells — and ultimately, experiment with code.

For closer look at the game, check out this video:

Karma’s a bitch.

Days after posting a controversial video on YouTube titled “Dear Fat People"—where she jokes about obesity and even compares some overweight people to slow-moving zombies—Nicole Arbour is out of the job.

It turns out that Pat Mills has decided to drop the YouTube star from an upcoming movie and told Zap2it why he never wants to see Arbour again.

”[I’m making] a dance movie, so obviously we needed a choreographer. We met with a woman who not only did traditional dance choreography, but was a cheerleader as well. She was fun and nice and had a lot of energy,“ Mills told the site.

“She seemed like a perfect fit for the project. I shared the script with her. She said she dug it and was excited to come on board…and then a crazy thing happened on Saturday—I saw something on the Internet that made me never want to see her again.”

Mills continued to explains how Arbour’s fat-shaming comments completely contradict the message behind Don’t Talk to Irene, saying, “It’s a body-positive teen dance movie set in a retirement home. It’s about a 16-year-old girl who dreams of being a cheerleader, but she is constantly being bullied for being fat.”

In the end, Mills says, the main character “learns that she doesn’t have to change anything about herself to be awesome because she already is.”

Mills also wanted to note that Arbour’s viral bullying hit a nerve for another reason.

“I’m gay, I was bullied a lot as a kid. I’m no stranger to ridicule and loneliness. [Her video] is an unfunny and cruel fat-shaming video that guises itself about being about ‘health.’ It’s fat phobic and awful…I was so upset I was shaking.”