Of iPhones, iPod Touches, Games and Mobile "Casual" Learning

With fresh inspiration from a course I just finished here at Stanford on "Casual Learning Technologies for the iPhone" in which we designed casual apps for kids and adults, I've authored a 2-part article for Smartbean. The first is a brief discussion of research on the power of learning through games (including Gee's principles on "good learning" with well-designed games) - Of iPhone Apps for Kids and Learning Through Gaming – I,
and the second part is a fairly exhaustive list of some of the best iPhone apps for kids (ages 3 - 13) categorized by subject (art, math, science, languages, puzzles, and such) - Of iPhone Apps for Kids and Learning through Gaming – II

Back to my Stanford course on iPhone Apps for casual learning... I partnered with a couple of grad students to design and program an app to teach boolean logic while playing a fun robot shooter game; the only difference being that that our "guns" were logic gates, and the bit that the player had to shoot based on 2 random 1/0 input bits was the bit that matched the "rogue bot" moving towards the gate "gun". The idea was to select the right logic gate, to shoot the right bit, and get the bot before it got you.

The motivation for this app was the big push for STEM by the Obama administration and the belief that “computational reasoning is the core of all modern Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines and is intrinsic to all other disciplines; it is a fundamental skill for everybody, not just for computer scientists. To reading, writing, and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every child's analytical ability.” (Jeannette Wing, Head of the Computer & Information Science and Engineering Directorate at National Science Foundation) So in a sense our app could be described as "STEM meets James Paul Gee." :)

The course was a pleasant deviation from my usual courses here at Stanford. I enjoyed programming the app, and the 2 guys from Apple who taught us to program for the iPhone were awesome! It was my most enjoyable course thus far; and the fact that the app received such positive feedback was just icing on the cake :) Here are some screenshots of the app and people playing with it...

Spore: Experiencing Evolution

A hugely anticipated PC game, Spore - was launched worldwide in September this year. This game has not only enthralled many kids and adults alike around the world, but also got educators talking about the value of this game in education - to help children learn about the concept of evolution, survival, migration, city development, trade and trade routes, and design of creatures and spaceships (among other things). The best part of Spore is that this learning is not overt - it just happens as kids play this immensely enjoyable (and addictive for some) game.

You can read about the accolades it has received and also visit the official spore website for more info, including an amazing demo of how you can nurture the creature your create through five stages of evolution: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space.

Here's a write-up my 12-year old son Sidhanth wrote on his Spore experiences. He's enjoyed creating and uploading videos of his Spore creations to youtube - a cool feature that is integrated into the core functionality of the game.

Check out this Spore Ad video from the Spore youtube channel: