Games in Education Symposium - August 1 & 2

On August 1st and 2d, the Esteves School of Education at Sage College in Troy New York will be hosting the Games in Education Symposium.  I am excited to share that I will be presenting a workshop on using Game Maker to teach Video Game Design and Development in Middle and High School.

The two day workshop has many wonderful speakers lined up including:

Chris Haskell is a doctoral student and special lecturer for the Educational Technology Department at Boise State University.  Chris and Lisa Dawley created 3D GameLab, a game-based / quest based Learning Management System.  Chris Haskell focuses on the incorporation of emerging technology (social media, virtual worlds, gaming, etc.) in Teacher Education.

Joel Levin, "The Minecraft Teacher" (@MinecraftTeachr) and founder of Minecraft Edu  has been teaching 1st and 2d graders using Minecraft in the classroom.  He is certainly instrumental in the movement to bring Minecraft into Education as a teaching tool.  Joel was featured in a video case study as part of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center Research on Teacher Attitudes Toward Gaming in Education conducted by Jessica Millstone and Allisyn Levy.

Speaking of Allisyn Levy (@allisyn)... she will be presenting a talk on how teachers are using video games in the classroom.  Hopefully she will be showing some of the video case studies mentioned above.  Not to add a spoiler here, but I was the teacher in one of the case studies.  Perhaps you will see it at the symposium!

Lucas Gillispie (@PCSTech), known for his involvement with Minecraft in Schools and WoW in Schools, will share his latest game-based project encouraging middle school students to explore the rich storytelling in video games on a variety of platforms.  .

Peggy Sheehey (@PeggySheehy), also known for her work with WoW in Education, will be presenting "The Game Plan: Why Education Needs to Pay Attention to Video Games!".  She will dispel the myths about gaming and show the clear connections between games and learning.  

I'm very excited to attend a conference with such a clear focus on Games in Learning.  It should be a great couple of days for sure!  Oh, and did I mention... REGISTRATION IS FREE!!!