Games in Education 2017

Education has been one of the primary beneficiaries of our collective creativity. If a half century of text, film, television, and games and research can be our guide, we can make accurate prediction about the future of education. In this presentation, Dr. Haskell (perhaps dressed as a Star Fleet officer) will identify trends in information access, technology tools, interfaces, artificial intelligence, describing their proliferation in an upbeat, TED-style and Star Trek themed presentation. He will share research into how these tools and trends have changed education and those major changes on the horizon. Attendees will "Boldy go where no [audience] has gone before.

The ability - and the challenge - to sift truth from fiction seems to only grow more important as the world descends deeper into the digital age. However, fiction writers have been confronting readers with unreliable narrators long before social media. They present a unique obstacle to readers and require students to ascertain the basic facts, identify possible biases, and then reconcile it all into a coherent narrative for their own analysis. However, written stories - for all their depth - are static. The ultimate test for students would be to tangle with an unreliable narrator directly. That's why for their final exam my 9th grade students played the award winning game Her Story. This session will show how I conceived, created, and executed a unit that blended traditional content and analysis with 21st century media for any teacher who is interested in game based learning and its benefits.