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Fun Educational Summer Activities!

Now that summer is in full swing check out these great activities to do with your family or send the information along to your students. Educational summer activities are a great way to help students learn while they are having fun as well as giving teachers beneficial professional development.

The Smithsonian is hosting a variety of programs every day this summer! The Mystery of the Megatherium Club: Mustaches and Mayhem is going on every day at the Smithsonian Castle, sometimes twice a day! This scavenger hunt will excite the whole family! Also, on select days there are films after 5 p.m. at the Anacostia Community Museum! Check out their summer activities and events to see which museum is hosting something that will entertain and enrich your child’s summer. If the events are not your thing and you love just to check out their exhibits, hurry some of these programs leave this fall!

Looking for some professional development to do from the comfort of your home? Twitter is your place to be this summer. With a variety of edchats being conducted on various days and new porch PD, it is safe to say that an educator could enjoy gaining new information, tools, techniques, and resources from other educators around the world from the comfort of their home! There are many chats to participate in, and I guarantee the schedule will keep you busy! Some notable chats to participate in are #edchat, #satchatWC (West Coast Leadership Chat), #satchatOC (Oceania Coast Leadership Chat), #mschat (Middle School Chat), #sschat (Social Studies Chat),#ntchat (Ed Tech Chat), #engchat (English Chat), #mathchat (Math Chat) and #games4ed (GBL Chat).

Summer is also a great time to learn at summer camps, workshops, and conferences and most summer activities on Eventbrite are free!

Going on right now is the Modern Robotics LocoSummer Camp Series by LocoRobo Innovations Inc. This camp is from Mon. July 10th – Fri, July 14th.

The Urban Institute is inviting educators to a forum on Wed. July 12, 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. on The Impact of Early Childhood Education on Health and Well-Being: The Latest Research on Policies for Action.

Also on July 12th is the Microsoft Inspire IAMCP Women in Technology Charity Luncheon from 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.

Excited about Legos? Send your kids to a 1-Day Lego Summer Camp on Sat. July 15th from 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m hosted by e2 Young Engineers.

Make the trip to Norfolk, VA on July 21st from 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. for the Inspiring Teacher Conference from YAV and Old Dominion University College.

Women in Tech Demo Day Presented by Capital One is a two-day event from Fri. July 21 – Sat. July 22. This program is by the Women Who Code and AngelHack.

Lastly, on Sat. Aug. 12 send your daughters to the Product Designer (World Fair Event) hosted by the DAR from 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Have fun this summer and don’t forget that there are a lot of free, fun, and educational events going on all over the states. Check out museum sites, Eventbrite, and Twitter for great ideas!

The Education Team Returns from ISTE

Dig-It Games had a blast last week at ISTE. The Conference was ideal for new technological experiences, ideas, learning, and networking. Our Education team presented on GBL and participated in the 3rd annual Game Night! For 4 days San Antonio became a magical, techy wonderland for all ISTE participants.

While at ISTE, our education team felt exhilarated by the big trends in technology for education! In education, we know that a lot of innovative ideas come out of conferences and they drive the education community to move toward new ideas and techniques that better prepare our students for the future. Some trends our team noticed were makerspaces, coding, mixed reality, and game-based learning.

If you are not familiar with makerspaces, it is time to get your students creating! At the conference, presenters urged teachers to not only allow their students to create but to give students opportunities to publish their works. (Check out this blog for ideas to help build a makerspace – http://ideas.demco.com/blog/lean-startup-approach-starting-your-makerspace/)

Coding is here to stay. Many companies are adding coding activities for students on their sites. There is a push to have students as young as kindergarten play and learn the concepts of coding. Robots are also becoming more accessible for classrooms and are allowing students to apply their coding skills into action! (Check out this article for ideas on coding – https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250323)

Some new ideas on the rise in technology for education are virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). Pokemon Go has created a whole world of learning through augmented reality that has now evolved into many new companies that are providing workable reality platforms that are allowing students to experiment with their understanding of virtual, augmented and the new mixed reality, which is a combination of both. (Check out this website for more information on mixed reality – http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/01/bored-of-virtual-reality-microsofts-betting-on-mixed-reality-now.html)

Dig-It! Games was among many friends in the GBL community as games for education is still a staple at the technology conference. With new advancements in VR, AR, and MR, Dig-It! Games is looking forward to incorporating new technology into our games that will heighten the player’s experience. Get excited for new things coming from Dig-It! Games!

Dig-It! Games is going to ISTE

Dig-It! Games is super excited! This June 25 – June 28, 2017, Dig-It! Games is traveling to the ISTE Conference in San Antonio, Texas! Our company will be presenting and participating in a variety of events. We are so excited to bring our games to the ISTE conference, which has been held in numerous U.S. cities every year for the last three decades, to excite teachers with the potential to heighten their instruction. We are slated to present, Become a Game-Based Learning Guru and are planning to attend numerous social events.

ISTE began almost 40 years ago as a way for K-12 educators to network about changes in learning and to make the biggest impact for our students. Dig-It! Games feels that our mission to build fun, educational games for middle-school-aged students is directly aligned with the mission of ISTE. We know that learning needs to be fun and we design fun games that meet a variety of learners needs. By building digital games, we are building bridges from curriculum to learning in a safe, fun, engaging way.

Come check us out on Monday, June 25th for our workshop that will teach instructors on the elements of game-based learning and learn how to evaluate games for their curriculum needs. You can also look for us at any of the gaming networking events Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night. Some events we are planning to attend are ISTE Game Night/LAN Party: Networking with Games, Online Learning Network Annual Meeting, Ed Tech Coaches Network Annual Membership Meeting, and EduMachinima Fest 2017. The ISTE conference is a great way to meet fellow educators that have a thirst for new knowledge and love technology integration in their classrooms. Come check us out and get some Dig-It! Games swag!

Games to Prepare for Testing

April is a busy time of the year, and it also signifies that the school year will soon end. The end of the school year means one thing in the education field, review of all content material cover in the curriculum to help students prepare for their end-of-year projects and assessments. What is the best way to prepare students? Some teachers use review packets and drill practice worksheets. However, the best way to review the content and prepare for testing is to have students play games!

At Dig-It! Games, we have numerous games that help students review standards in the intermediate and middle school grade levels.

Loot Pursuit: Early America is a great game for 4th, 5th, and 6th-grade students to practice math computation and U.S. History standards on Jamestown.

Exotrex Episode 1 allows students to review concepts taught in Physical Science and Earth Science standards.

Excavate! is a series of ancient civilization games on the social, cultural and economic standards of the cultures of Maya, Egypt, and Mesopotamia through ancient artifacts.

Games allow students multiple attempts where a state assessment/end-of-year test only gives the student one chance with the material. Games enable students to play with concepts and materials taught during the year in a quick, safe and easy way to help students practice and cement the information they are reviewing. For all students no matter the grade, there is a lot of curriculum covered in a school year, and a subject specific game can allow students to fail at concepts while practicing over and over again until the student and the teacher feel that they have mastered the concepts needed to pass the yearly assessments.

As the end of the school year nears to a close and those state tests draw closer, make sure your students are ready! Check out our games as well as others to help your students prepare for their final assessments!

Snow Days, Game Days

Snow is in the forecast, and you don’t want your students to lose pace with the curriculum. What to do? Educational digital games are the solution. An easy way to make sure that your students review and practice material, so they do not become rusty with concepts covered in class. This can also be a great solution to help front load students for new concepts that will be taught once the abominable snow recedes.

By taking the time to set up a digital classroom, you can ensure that your students (and their parents) will be able to access any materials, resources or information you wish them to have available to them on their “snowcation.” Google Classroom has been a great tool to fulfill this need for teachers. Here a teacher can create assignments, announcements, insert links to games and monitor their student’s activity. If you don’t have access to Google Classroom, it could be a separate section on your school web page.

By creating the digital classroom, a teacher has taken steps to ensure that some form of learning is taking place at home by creating a digital platform for communication. Here as a teacher, I can give students dialog and directions to play certain educational games that will supplement our previous instruction, cover instruction missed, and utilize games as digital instruction to prepare students for material they are going to see in the near future. Teacher’s directions can be as simple as; play this game, play this game to a specified level, or play this game and achieve a certain score. Most educational games are also including a reporting system, so depending on the game assigned, it is up to the teacher how they will collect the student’s progress by either looking at the game’s report or having students record their progress in the Google Classroom assignment feature.

The old snow days of sitting around and just watching television are over. With the easy accessibility of the internet, teachers can now reach out to students to make sure students do not lose out on precious instructional time! It’s also not a bad deal for the students who get assigned to play games, and the byproduct just happens to be learning!

Memorize the Solar System!

What is the best way to teach students about the solar system? As an instructor, what instructional methods might you choose to present the content? The traditional method chosen is to have students read about the solar system from their science textbook or do you choose to utilize Game-Based Learning? The first method can be dry, impersonal, and depending on the year it was published, inaccurate. Some instructors will infuse text readings with primary sources, such as articles, videos, and photos from or about space to help students visualize and understand the content better. These additions will supplement and heighten instruction to encompass visual, spatial, linguistic and auditory modes of learning.

After teaching about the solar system, many students are required to show proficiency on an assessment or project. To prepare for this, one method chosen by students is to make flashcards. This form of learning or memorization only works for some students; one such proficient example of this form of learning is the brilliant four-year-old Brielle. Watch her here on the Ellen Show!

But as all seasoned teachers know, flashcards are not a tool that works for all students. What all students need are hands-on experiences that allow students to explore and apply the new information found in their schema. Now, this can be hard to do while learning about the solar system, being that the closest planet, Venus, can vary from 38 million to 261 million kilometers away. This presents a problem if we want students to apply new understanding of concepts learned to real life examples.

One solution is virtual reality. Pairing traditional methods of instruction with game-based learning can lead to amazing results. Games are digital learning tools that allow a student to apply their knowledge while playing and analyze the outcomes to determine if concepts need to be revisited and reviewed in a non-threatening environment. Losing a game does not hold the same negative stigma that a bad grade on an exam holds. A student can play and replay a game until mastery of the concept or level is achieved!

Within this format, a teacher will be able to gather and determine their student’s performance and therefore determine areas that need to be reviewed and which areas show mastery. This method of instruction is called Game-Based Learning and it is proving to be a great way to blend curriculum standards with interactive learning fun.

To learn more about Game-Based Learning check out the infographic below from www.online-education-degrees.net.

To explore the solar system, check out our new educational digital game; ExoTrex Episode 1 and begin the journey incorporating Game-Based Learning into your classroom!

Teacher Gift That Keeps On Giving

Time just escapes us when we are having fun making educational games for students around the world. Where did the year 2016 go? As we near the end of the year the month of December is one of giving and sharing. We have shared a lot with the education community and wanted to find a way to continue some of that sharing during the giving season.

Are you giving a gift to your child’s teacher this year? What if you could give a gift to your child’s whole classroom and to a classroom of underserved students for the same price? With our Get One Give One Program you can give two classroom’s worth of games for less than $25. For a limited time, purchase 25 copies of Excavate!™, Excavate!™ Egypt, Loot Pursuit™ Maya, or Loot Pursuit™ Early America for a 67% discount off the individual price. You send the games to the teacher of your choice and we will donate a classroom’s worth of games to a teacher at an underserved school. Just add the game of your choice to your cart, apply the discount code TEACHER2016 and send the license keys you receive to your teacher. It’s the gift that truly keeps on giving and with your help we can eradicate summer learning loss. Offer expires 12/31/2016. For more information on our campaign to fight summer learning loss, visit our GOGO Learn page.

The Games

ExoTrex Wins EDDIE for Interactive Science Game

Dig-It! Games® is proud to receive ComputED Gazette’s Annual Software Review Award (EDDIE) for our exciting computer game ExoTrex™, which teaches math, science and reading skills to 8th-10th graders. The Gazette awards ground-breaking software and websites that help parents and teachers promote academic excellence.

Cultural Awareness Stickers

We are pleased to announce our support of cultural heritage awareness with a new pack of iMessage stickers for iPhone and iPad users. Have you ever needed to send a friend a bucket or a shovel? Ever wished you could send an Eye of Horus to someone you care about? Or maybe a Roman coin to that penny-pinching friend? With the Archaeology Emoji Sticker pack, now you can have more fun with history!

This package was published for Archaeology Day October 15, 2016 to help promote archaeology awareness worldwide. Protecting endangered archaeological sites has become a pressing issue for the community and it is our goal to use media like this to advocate greater preservation of cultural heritage. The more you use the stickers in your message, the greater the awareness. However, advocacy aside, it is just fun so share them, so get your friends to get them too and start sending archaeology messages today!

DIG-IT! Games is committed to producing educational games that introduce archaeology into classroom curriculum. You can explore our efforts in the app store.

Create Awareness

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ExoTrex Space Adventure Game

“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship ….B.E.A.K.E.R…. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Many will remember this phrase from the introductory sequence of the Star Trek series but in this case our starship is not the Enterprise, but B.E.A.K.E.R, the ship introduced in our newest space adventure STEM game, ExoTrex™. ExoTrex™ takes place in the not-so distant future, where humanity has used up all Earth’s resources and must find a new place to live. Using an innovative new fuel cell called B.E.A.K.E.R (Basic Element Analysis Kinetic Energy Reactor), players must use their chemistry and critical thinking skills to explore deep space and investigate exoplanets to find a new home for the human race.

For many middle and high school students, chemistry, physics and planetary science studies might seem just as challenging as the Enterprise’s mission in Star Trek, but ExoTrex™ can help. ExoTrex™ was designed for students from 8th to 10th grades and uses fun puzzles and problem solving exercises to build critical thinking skills that promote college and career readiness across STEM content areas including: science, math, and science literacy. In an effort to reach underserved students, DIG-IT! Games® ensured the ExoTrex™ narrative and characters would also appeal to minority students who are severely underrepresented in STEM education and careers.

In the newly released Episode 1 of ExoTrex™, players prove their readiness for the mission by completing a series of training exercises that test their chemistry understanding, knowledge of space history and critical thinking skills. Players who make it through this rigorous mission training will take the B.E.A.K.E.R. ship on a variety of exploratory missions in space in future episodes.

Students who play ExoTrex™ will meet Dr. Gerald Burke, an African American character who is based on the grandfather of DIG-IT! Games Artist Mikel Wellington. As DIG-IT! Games’ CEO says, “Dr. Burke’s presence in the game elevates the product from a game about science to a game about successfully overcoming barriers and challenges. His story is inspirational and it’s our hope that including him in this game will serve to motivate students of color to enter STEM fields.”

To increase the reach and impact of ExoTrex™, DIG-IT! Games partnered with renowned Astrophysicist, Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi who, in addition to being a star on the popular TV show, Outrageous Acts of Science, is also the Chief Science Officer for both Discovery Communications and the Science Channel.

“The decision to partner with DIG-IT! Games was easy because we are both on a mission to use innovative ways to teach and to reach underserved kids.” Says Dr. Oluseyi, “The diversity in ExoTrex™ is especially important because it’s empowering to students to see and hear someone who looks like them and sounds like them doing science. Today you have to capture kids’ attention in seconds. The visuals in ExoTrex™ do that.”

The game’s three episodes will challenge students to not only learn to power the ion propulsion ship, but also to sample the planetary characteristics of known and unknown planets as they analyze, evaluate and make recommendations for an alternative to Earth. Students will love this immersive STEM experience while they have a hand in helping humanity in the not-too-distant future!

Learn more about the game and how to purchase it here. This game is part of our “Get One, Give One” campaign (#GOGOLEARN) where we give away one game for each game purchased. Learn more about our GoGoLearn campaign and our partnership with NSLA to fight summer learning loss through gaming here.

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