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Games for Change: GBLxAPI & More

Games for Change Festival 2018

Games for Change seeks to discover how games can impact education, healthcare, research, civics, social issues, and more! We attended the 15th annual Games for Change Festival this year. During the conference, we saw the best of the industry!

Also, we presented during the conference! Therefore, we wanted to share our experience at the Festival. Anyone who missed our presentation on GBLxAPI can get information here, along with info on the projects presented alongside us.

GBLxAPI

Our COO Stuart Claggett spoke about our revolutionary new learning analytics program at Games for Change. GBLxAPI has been in the works for years, funded in part by the National Science Foundation. Based off the xAPI standard, it recently positioned itself as the new community standard for K-12 learning analytics within the educational games and apps space.

Factuality

Factuality at Games for Change

Natalie Gillard came to speak about her board game Factuality at the conference. Factuality is a 90 minute crash course on structural inequality via game. Through its board game structure, it seeks to make its players comfortable with being uncomfortable. Also, in combination with facilitated dialogue, it gives them deeper understanding of how structured inequality works.

Queen Rania Foundation

Queen rania foundation at Games for Change

Aya Saket, Research and Program Development Officer at the Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development, spoke about using games to teach math in Jordinian schools. According to its mission statement, QRF seeks to be the “premier resource on educational issues, in Jordan and around the Arab world, and to act as an incubator for new ideas and initiatives.”

Curiscope

Curiscope at Games for Change

Finally, Ed Barton spoke about his company Curiscope. At Curiscope, they focus on using VR and AR technology to inspire a love of science in students. Virtuali-Tee combines wearable tech with AR to create a deep lesson into the workings of the human body.

Future of Games for Change

Thanks to anyone who came out to see us talk GBLxAPI in person! Hopefully we’ll be back at the Games for Change Festival next year. We had a blast both presenting and listening to the other presentations during the three days in NYC. However, the talented people who presented alongside us are only the tip of the iceberg. So many energetic and passionate people have entered this field. If you didn’t attend this year, consider buying a ticket for the 16th annual festival!

Meanwhile, we continue to work on the analytics system and look forward to seeing how it will change the landscape of game-based learning.

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Game-Based Learning in the classroom

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TeacherGaming and Young Socratics Odyssey

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Educational Escape Rooms for teachers

Educational Escape Rooms: Benefits, Examples, & More!

Game-Based Learning in the Classroom: What’s the Point?

Game-Based Learning in the Classroom

We think game-based learning pushes students to get more invested in learning. By utilizing games, teachers motivate students to try harder through competition and interactivity. However, the tools understandably intimidate many teachers new to using technology in the classroom. On this post, discover how game-based learning works in the classroom and how it benefits students. Also, find sources to discover more about the subject.

What is Game-Based Learning?

Game-Based Learning in the classroom- what is it?

Game-based learning grows in popularity with each passing year. With an increasingly digital society, more and more teachers look for new ways to engage their technologically-minded students. Games provide a method for students to connect with their learning materials. Also, they offer a safe space for students to fail and learn from failure.

However, not all game-based learning experiences work for everyone. The definitions above help in understanding the basic concept, but an effective experience comes from a capable teacher. Rather than replacing teachers, educational games partner with good teachers to create an awesome lesson both fun and helpful. Games teach not only facts but skills. By virtue of being digital, games bring opportunities to have unique experiences that would be hard to replicate in physical form. Additionally, games provide a framework for assessing student performance in applying lessons. More diverse than straight tests, games gather impartial data on student performance that can be fed back to the teacher.

Bear in mind, different games work for different classes.

How Can I Use Game-Based Learning in the Classroom?

Game-based learning in the classroom - how to use it?

Flexible and varied, teachers use game-based learning in the classroom to achieve many goals. Games help teachers provide new material in an interesting way, conduct assessments, or motivate students to work harder. Clearly, the goal depends on the kind of class and the subject taught. By identifying the goal first, teachers tailor game choice towards these goals. That way, game-based learning offers the most benefit. Additionally, students enjoy it more when it feels purposeful in their education.

However, more importantly, games show success in meeting these educational goals.

What’s Good About Game-Based Learning?

Game-based learning in the classroom - what's good about it?

Game-based learning meets a variety of needs from teachers. More than half of teachers agree that game-based learning motivates low-performing and special education students. They get more involved in lessons and become more interested in learning. Read a teacher’s thoughts on how our Excavate! games gets her special-ed classroom interested in learning here. The review also touches on how game-based learning personalizes education. Other reasons cited above for using game-based learning include promotion of collaboration, independent learning, and the ability to deliver content from a distance.

Many games fall under national standards like Common Core. For example, our Excavate! games follow C3 standards for world history education. However, not every game works for standardized curriculum, so make sure the game works for your class.

What Do Other Teachers Say?

Game-based learning in the classroom - what do others think?

Many teachers welcome the tools into their classroom and find their students love it. Good educational learning developers provide frameworks for teachers to work with. For our Excavate! games and ExoTrex games, we offer free teacher’s guides and lesson plans to help use the games with students. Always make sure that you feel comfortable with a game before giving it to students. Game-based learning in the classroom starts with a good teacher. No matter how good the game, it needs a teacher to guide students through learning.

How to Find Out More?

The statistics quoted in this blog come from Level Up Learning, a national survey about teaching with games in K-8. We highly recommend giving the whole report a read. Also, we offer this report on digital game-based learning in secondary education as another sources of information. Just a quick search on the web brings up tons of information and options for learning more about educational games.

Women’s History Month: Female Space Pioneers

Female Space Astronauts, Cosmonauts, and Mathematicians

As we continue through Women’s History Month, we take a look back at some female space pioneers. The women served in all kinds of roles from helping build rockets to riding in them. No matter their position, all the women featured here cemented their position in space history through their many accomplishments.

Katherine Johnson and the Mathematicians of NASA

At the beginning of World War II, the demand for aeronautical engineering began increasing exponentially. Langley Memorial Aeronautical Labratory began hiring women in 1935 to do number crunching. Margot Lee Shetterly’s 2016 book Hidden Figures told the stories of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan along with many others. Additionally, the critically acclaimed 2017 movie based on the book focused on these “human calculators.”

The women highlighted in Hidden Figures worked for NACA (later NASA) starting in the 40s and 50s. Through their math, they worked on making the flying machines better, stronger, and faster and calculating flight trajectories for important missions, including the Apollo missions.

NASA recognized Katherine Johnson specifically in 2017 through naming the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility after her. Without the research and dedication of Johnson and her contemporaries, NASA would not be the same as it is today.

The Very First Woman in Space

The first female space explorer- first woman in space Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth 48 times and became the first woman in space in June of 1963. Before being chosen as a Soviet cosmonaut, she never even flew a plane. Rather, she was a textile worker and amateur parachute jumper. The latter skill earned her the job. After eighteen months of grueling training, she became the only woman out of five to be selected.

Beyond just being the first woman in space, she remains the only woman to ever fly a solo mission. Since her mission, Museum exhibits, stage plays, and documentaries celebrated her space legacy . Additionally, she carried the Olympic torch for part of its journey in both the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Sally Ride: Female Physicist and American Astronaut

The first American woman to go to space and the youngest astronaut ever Sally Ride blasted down barriers as she blasted into space in 1983 as the first American female astronaut to actually enter the final frontier. She served as a mission specialist on the STS-7 space shuttle mission. As a mission specialist on that flight, Ride worked a robotic arm to help release satellites into space.

After her time as an active astronaut, Ride continued to work in the STEM field, particularly in encouraging STEM education. She wrote books about space exploration and co-founded Sally Ride Science in 2001. Her work with the organization aimed to support students into careers within STEM, particularly girls and minorities. Through teacher training, books, festivals, classroom activities and more, she sought to transform the idea of what a successful scientist could look like. Even after her death in 2013, her legacy continues.

The Women of ExoTrex 2

ExoTrex2 stem game character concept of female space operative When looking to engage students in STEM learning and space exploration, look no further than ExoTrex 2, a game that will test their physics, chemistry and critical thinking abilitities. Exotrex 2 is a beautifully rendered, STEM focused game that will challenge and engage your 8th – 10th grade science students.

The player partners with the AI Fiona and supervisor Dr. Estelle Burke, a female space pioneer herself, to find a new home for humanity. To complete this mission, students start by balancing speed, thrust, and acceleration while navigating gravitational fields to successfully land rovers on their chosen planet or moon. Also, they remotely navigate their rovers to collect ground and atmospheric samples and later analyze them for their chemical compositions. Finally, Students will learn about the planetary characteristics of each destination and take observational notes in order to report their findings back to Dr. Burke.

Help get your students passionate about space with these profiles of female space history-makers and by going hands-on with ExoTrex!

Get into Space with ExoTrex 2

Buy The Game

Women’s History Month: Female Rulers from World History

Women’s History Month: Our Female Game Developers

World Space Week 2017

Byzantine Empire Joins Excavate! Social Studies Game Series

A Byzantine Empire Game for the Social Studies Classroom

Our latest expansion to our long-running Excavate! social studies and archaeology game series arrives today! Play Excavate! Byzantine on the web, Android devices, or iOS devices for $3.99. If you want more than one civilization, contact us to request bundle pricing.

Byzantine brings out total number of games up to six. Previously, the Excavate! series included Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, MesoAmerica, and Greece. Like its predecessors, Excavate! Byzantine includes C3-aligned gameplay and companion teacher resources. For specifics, you can find out more on the main page for the game.

Analyze Artifacts and Discover the Byzantine Empire

Byzantine game tasks students with archaeology and socials studies analysis

Dig-It! Games CEO Suzi Wilczynski, a former middle school teacher, designs the Excavate! games. Through engaging gameplay and challenging analysis, the series aims to take students on entertaining and educational archaeological adventures through time and around the world. By using archaeologists’ tools, players uncover real artifacts from ancient cultures.

First, the game gets players immediately in the dirt, evaluating the proper tool to use while learning about the scientific process of excavation. Through this, players learn concepts such as stratigraphy, context and the importance of proper recording. Next, analysis takes center stage as players learn about the significance of the artifacts they collect and gain a deeper understanding of ancient people through what they left behind. Each civilization includes 3D artifacts and detailed illustrations of ancient life to immerse the user in each unique culture.

“We are pleased to be adding this new world history civilizations to the popular series after recently updating our previous content to align to C3 standards to make a more effective teaching tool” says Wilczynski. “Through its expansive content and flexible applications, Excavate!™ provides a high-quality resource for educators across their full World History Curriculum.”

Explore and Experience Byzantine Life

Excavate! Byzantine game has students analyze artifacts using archaeology and social studies knowledge

Excavate! Byzantine takes students to the Hagia Sophia, the Imperial Palace, an oikos (or house), and a market to discover how the people of this civilization lived. While they analyze artifacts, students learn about the role of religion, family, military, and trade in the empire. In this way, students not only learn about life in the Byzantine Empire but also stretch their critical thinking skills.

Teachers, we also provide several helpful resources for creating lesson plans around Excavate! Byzantine. Look through the Teachers Guide, focus on Inquiry Analysis, and quiz your students with these Artifact Based Questions. Because we want to make the use of these games as easy as possible, we have similar resources for each of the games in the Excavate! series.

If you want more information, read the full press release here.

Play Excavate! Byzantine Today!

get it now

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Personalizing Learning with the Excavate! Series of Games

We are back this week with another blog post from a great educator, Samantha McClusky. She is a Special Education teacher in Searcy, Arkansas. Below, she describes how she uses video games to promote personalized learning in her classroom.

The Magic of Interactive Lesson Plans

Teacher uses Excavate! social studies games with special education students

I teach in a self contained special education classroom, for students with behavior and social issues. Students are grades 7-12, with varying levels of academic achievement. I always look for new ways to teach my students, that meet their diverse needs. I love finding interactive materials to use through the use of my Smart projector and computer.

Dig-It! Games has had many interactive learning games that we have used with great success. Just a couple of years ago I utilized the Mayan Mysteries game in my classroom. I use the game from one computer and project it using the Smart Projector. Students gather around the board and get up and take turns during the game, answering questions, discussing scenarios, and reading instructions. They take turns to complete sections of the game and work together as a group to solve puzzles and answer questions.

As I teach students with varying levels of academic achievement, participating in these interactive learning experiences really helps them achieve with a whole group effort and the individual input helps them have pride in the groups successes!

Using Video Games in Special Education

Teacher uses Excavate! social studies games in special education classroom

The Excavate! games are just great! My students take it in turns to excavate with the tools, read the instructions and questions aloud, answer questions, discuss ideas, and complete the journaling. They are learning so much, and ASK for me to teach them MORE! We continue the learning by connecting the Excavate! game to unit lessons based on the same country, time period, and culture. As a class we have explored Ancient Rome for example, continuing our discovery through reading of texts, watching documentary based film, looking at math and science connections, and discovering the world through geography and history.

The Dig-It! games are like a springboard that students stand on and then leap from to WANTING to discover MORE. Learning through the game based format really connects learners of the 21st century to education, and helps them discover things that they may not have been interested in by just reading a text, or writing a research paper! It brings the learning to their level and excites them to take the learning even further.

Want to Learn More About Our Educational Video Games?

If you want to find out how to use our educational video games in your classroom, feel free to reach out! We believe that the engagement and excitement that video games bring to education can open the eyes of even the most reluctant learner. Find our library of games here. Our Excavate! series consists of Rome, Egypt, MesoAmerica, Greece, Mesopotamia, and Byzantine (coming soon). Also check out our other blogs about interactive lesson plans for ancient civilizations. Email our Education Team if you have any questions!

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Additional Resources for Ancient Civilizations:

Teacher’s Game Review of the Excavate History Series

Game Reviews Are Pouring in for Excavate!

2017 | A Year of Digital Learning

Snow Days, Game Days Update

February can be the snowiest month and this year is no different. Schools are more cautious than ever about student safety and this results in a ton of delays and cancellations. As a teacher, this can be incredibly frustrating as end of year testing is looming. As parents, you are scrambling to find something for you kids to do all day. Hopefully this post will help.

Communication tools for teachers

It’s easier than ever (almost too easy) to be in communication with the school community. These are some tried and true student/family communication apps:

Remind – After signing up for text message alerts, teachers can easily send mass emails to their families. It also has a chat feature (and there’s no exchanging of phone numbers).
Email – Teachers, if you don’t have your parents set up as groups in your emails, please do so! It’ll make your life so much easier!
ClassDojo – easy way to see information about the student and communicate with the teacher.

Playtime in the snow!

We all have seen the research that says kids don’t get to play enough. Some of the best memories are made on snow days when everyone is snowed in together. So tell your students to get out there and build forts, throw snowballs, make snow angels and maybe do some science experiments. Then come back in and warm up with some indoor activities.

Let them play video games!

Last year we wrote this blog post for teachers about using video games to keep students active in material. Having a resources page on either Google Classroom or your LMS, or your website is always a good idea. Keeping it relevant to the current lesson is also a good idea, but not always necessary. Video games pass the time quickly and can encourage curiosity and love of learning. Check out our Excavate! Series of games to allow your student to become an archaeologist and also our ExoTrex series for the older kids.

Discover all our educational video games

Learn More

Enjoy the snow!

Having students show what they did and learned on their snow day can be so much fun and very inspirational to other students. Using a platform like FlipGrid or Google Slides allows students to share their experiences in their own words. We all know the importance of fostering an environment of curiosity and fun so that students continue their love of learning.

Teacher’s Game Review of the Excavate! History Series

As word about our Excavate! Series spreads, we have been honored to be in contact with amazing teachers who put it to the test. Below is the story of how we met our friend, Susan Honsinger, a gifted, computer, and math teacher at Saint Mary, a K-8 Catholic school in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. She also talks about how she uses the series with her students. Here’s her review of the social studies series.

Using Games in the Classroom

I first discovered Dig-It! Games in a workshop about game-based learning at FETC in 2015. I was impressed at the demonstration of the Mayan game activities and thought, “This would rock in a social studies classroom setting!” However, I was teaching other subjects at the time and didn’t get a chance to try it out.

Last spring, when brainstorming our 3^rd – 5^th grade gifted course outline for this year, I remembered Dig-It! Our gifted class this year meets once a week for 90 minutes, and the students have been exploring various ancient civilizations. They’ve done research online and in books, and created posters about the elements that make up every civilization, and how those elements are found in their chosen civilization.

Dig-It! Games’ Excavate! series – Mesopotamia, Rome, Egypt, Greece, and Maya (at that time, now MesoAmerica) – were a perfect way to get a little deeper into the cultures through exploring the artifacts that are dug up in the course of the game and they actually meshed with the chosen civilizations for our crew. We spent some time near the beginning of our project playing through the games – with a little guidance, even the 3^rd graders were able to easily navigate through the game. They loved collecting artifacts and finding out more using the journal feature.

After we played the games, I left them available as a free time choice, and students tried out other civilizations! I really saw the connections happening when our class started creating displays and “artifacts” from their culture to present later this year. They were working with much more detailed, authentic visions of the items from their culture and making their own reproductions more detailed.

I really saw the connections happening…

Susan Honsinger, Teacher

I’ve heard students talking about artifacts they found and how those are used as they’re working on their projects. One interesting note – we had a new student join the group, and the co-teacher suggested she play one of the Dig-It! Games to explore one of the cultures she was observing in the classroom. She loved it, and a passing student said, “That looks even cooler than the Maya game!” (He had played an older version.) So the new games are noticeably visually richer just to someone walking past!!

I’m a fan of using games to reinforce learning, even if it’s bingo with order of operations on paper (which I did today with my 6^th grade). However, when something is really rich in information and visually engaging as well, that’s a double-win. I see that the Excavate! games are embedded in student memory, and the facts and images they found there are being referred to in subsequent classes. Playing these games solidified their learning in a major way, and I’m so pleased!! I’d recommend any of them for a social studies unit, particularly from 4th through 8^th grades.

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Uncovering Ancient Rome: Did You Know?

Experience Mesopotamia, Don’t Just Teach It!

Teaching Ancient Egypt in 2018

More on Dig-iT! Games: We continue delivering game based learning products to social studies educators and students that make world cultures come to life in a fun and educational way. Expand your world history lesson plans with games from the leader in ancient civilization education products. Your students will thank you for it.

Experience Mesopotamia, Don’t Just Teach It!

Students often ask when they will use what they are learning in school or how a topic actually relates to their own lives. This can be particularly challenging while teaching about the daily life of Mesopotamia over 5,000 years ago.

We usually start with the contributions of the Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians. They were amazing civilizations since they developed agriculture, invented the wheel, created city-states, organized militaries and laid down the law in the form of Hammurabi’s code. We can even refer to top 10 lists of inventions that show that these civilizations were great and that they built the foundations of our modern life. While it is obvious that we owe a debt of gratitude to their inventiveness, we still need to approach teaching these civilizations in a way that engages the modern student.

One approach is to focus on lesser-known aspects of these civilizations like the History Channel’s list of “9 Things You May Not Know About the Ancient Sumerians.” You can impress students by highlighting that women were rulers, their cities were the size of modern cities and that they loved beer. However, in the end it may still feel like another list of irrelevant facts.

Another approach is to change how the information is taught. Crash Course has created a great library of quick and informative YouTube videos. These can be used as a great preview at the start of a unit. Their Mesopotamia video astutely proclaims that “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world monocular.” You may grab student’s attention with pithy animation videos, but you may want to utilize interactive digital experiences too.

Although the selection of online interactives about Mesopotamia is not very robust, there is a variety in the types of experiences to be had. There are basic interactives that essentially bring to life maps from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s textbooks. There are also interactives that put students in the decision maker’s position like Philip Martin’s interactive Hammurabi’s code. In this interactive, students have to choose the appropriate punishment based on the codes. The British Museum has an extensive interactive Mesopotamia site in which students can explore the geography, religion and technology of Babylonia, Assyria and Sumer. Finally, students can also try their hand at playing the ancient game of Ur.

As you can see, there are many resources to engage your students online. However, all of these are missing a core component which is key to engaging students deeply. Our understanding of history is always evolving based on new archaeological findings and the development of new scientific tools. Why not engage your students in the process of discovering and debating what actually happened?

History is discovery. Here at Dig-iT! Games, we are committed to the discovery of history through archaeology. We have just released Excavate! Mesopotamia, an interactive video game which provides a different way to look at Mesopotamian civilizations. The game challenges students to excavate artifacts, analyze them and then synthesize what they have learned. Students must closely examine artifacts and discover the purpose and significance of each one. This leads to a deeper understanding of the daily life in ancient Babylonia, Assyria and Sumer.

History is contested. For example, new technologies have afforded insight into the possible role that shepherds played in trade in Mesopotamia. Previously, historians believed that nomadic shepherds were instrumental in facilitating international trade. They would travel widely in search of greener pastures for their sheep and goats. But, new technologies have afforded new findings that are sparking controversy. It’s possible shepherds actually stayed closer to cities to supply milk and fur and were out of the trade networks. This article from Science Magazine highlights the debate. This is a great way to share with students the process of discovering history and the necessity of being critical of sources and processes used to reach conclusions. Encourage critical thinking skills over the belief that history is a closed case!

We hope you find these resources helpful in engaging your students in the study, exploration and intellectual discussion concerning Mesopotamia.

Guide to Holiday Gifts for Teachers

Gifts for the holidays Ask a teacher what gifts they want for Christmas and they might smile and say any of the following:

A snow day
Longer prep period
To use the restroom whenever they want
To reach that one student that needs help

Obviously, none of these options can be bought or wrapped, so let’s discuss some viable options to show your appreciation for someone who does so much for your child.

Gift Options

Gift Cards – I know a lot of people don’t like to give gift cards because it seems a little impersonal. However, gift cards to coffee shops, Target, or Amazon can be used to buy supplies for the classroom (or for themselves).
Reusable water bottles or travel coffee mugs – Nice water bottles and travel mugs can get pricey very quickly. Find ones that are insulated and don’t leak so they can throw it in their bag without fear of soaking students’ papers!
A Donation – Many teachers are turning to crowd-sourcing websites to fund projects and supplies. Check out donorschoose.org, adoptaclassroom.org, or classwish.org.
A personal gift – It’s great to get to know the teacher and their interests. I once received a knot blanket from a student that had my university’s logo on it. It’s one of my favorite gifts to this day.

The holidays can be tough.

Parents have enough to stress about over the holidays and this shouldn’t add to it! Teachers sincerely appreciate any gesture no matter how big or small. If your budget or time doesn’t allow for a gift, IT’S OK! A nicely worded note or email is enough. Not to mention, those notes of thanks are great year-round!

There can also be a big difference between elementary teachers and high school teachers. It’s much easier when your child only has one teacher versus 7 or 8. Don’t feel pressured to buy a gift for EVERY teacher, but do try to be discreet about giving the gifts out.

The perfect gift for the history teacher!

The Excavate! Card Game could be your gifts for teachers Have a history teacher to buy for? Or have a child that loves history? Check out our Excavate! Card Game. It’s a great way for students to make connections with ancient artifacts. Buy a few decks to make sure the entire class can enjoy! Check them out here!

That’s a Wrap! Summer Advice for Teachers

As a former teacher, I know very well the excitement that June brings for most educators out there. Some of you are already done (Congratulations!) and some are so close you can taste it (hang in there)! I still have that sense of anticipation even though this will be my first non-teacher summer ever! While I hope most of you can sit back and relax a bit, I also know that a lot of you will be working at some point this summer. The summer was a great time for me to reflect on the past year as a whole and start formulating my approach for the fall on my own time. I am no expert by any means, but I wanted to offer some of my advice for getting the most out of your summer planning:

If you kept a journal throughout the year, go back and read it. If not, think through your year. Make a list of your greatest lessons and also the ones that completely failed (we all have those). Analyze these to see what you can keep, get rid of, or change. I always had student feedback that I referenced while doing this too.

Keep up with your peers on Twitter. It’s the best free PD you can find! Use the hashtag for your content area and find chats that interest you – full schedule can be found here. It worked wonders for me for the past 5 years to just keep up with trends in schools and what teachers from all over the world were doing.
Do you use Kahoot, ClassDojo, or Dig-iT! Games? Check out my blog post about connecting with EdTech companies. They (we) want to hear from you! Do you have questions or concerns about something? Do you have a feature you’d like to see added? Don’t be afraid to reach out.
Learn something new! This is the perfect time to learn about technology tools, game based learning, or anything that will make your life easier in the fall. Check out these programs from the Institute of Play. Then put your new knowledge into practice by using one of our games! You can see them all here.
Lastly, relax and enjoy yourself as much as possible. If you have kids or extra summer jobs, try to carve out some time for yourself to recharge. It’s just as important!

We are just as excited about summer here at the studio. We have our education team heading to ISTE in San Antonio. If you’ll be there, reach out and meet up! You can find the blog post here to explain more. We are also working on curriculum and lesson plans to make implementing our games in the classroom much easier!

On Fridays our incredibly talented artists show off their skills live on Twitch and will answer any questions you may have about how they create characters and objects for our games. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook and sign up for our newsletter! You’ll get first access to our new games and the news coming out of the studio. We’d love to hear from you! Enjoy your summer!

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Games for Change Festival 2018

GBLxAPI

Factuality

Queen Rania Foundation

Curiscope

Future of Games for Change

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Game-Based Learning in the Classroom

What is Game-Based Learning?

How Can I Use Game-Based Learning in the Classroom?

What’s Good About Game-Based Learning?

What Do Other Teachers Say?

How to Find Out More?

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Female Space Astronauts, Cosmonauts, and Mathematicians

Katherine Johnson and the Mathematicians of NASA

The Very First Woman in Space

Sally Ride: Female Physicist and American Astronaut

The Women of ExoTrex 2

Get into Space with ExoTrex 2

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A Byzantine Empire Game for the Social Studies Classroom

Analyze Artifacts and Discover the Byzantine Empire

Explore and Experience Byzantine Life

Play Excavate! Byzantine Today!

You Might Also Be Interested In:

The Magic of Interactive Lesson Plans

Using Video Games in Special Education

Want to Learn More About Our Educational Video Games?

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Communication tools for teachers

Playtime in the snow!

Let them play video games!

Discover all our educational video games

Enjoy the snow!

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Using Games in the Classroom

I really saw the connections happening…

Susan Honsinger, Teacher

Read More Excavate! Game Reviews

Learn more about our Excavate! series

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Gift Options

The holidays can be tough.

The perfect gift for the history teacher!

Do you use Kahoot, ClassDojo, or Dig-iT! Games? Check out my blog post about connecting with EdTech companies. They (we) want to hear from you! Do you have questions or concerns about something? Do you have a feature you’d like to see added? Don’t be afraid to reach out.

Lastly, relax and enjoy yourself as much as possible. If you have kids or extra summer jobs, try to carve out some time for yourself to recharge. It’s just as important!