Gatlin International

The MEDEA Award recipients for 2011 were announced in late November at the Media and Learning Conference in Brussels, Belgium.  The MEDEA Awards are granted to individuals and organizations to support innovation and good practice in the use of audio, video, graphic, and animated media in education. These awards are also aimed at recognizing and promoting superior design demonstrated in the production of learning resources that incorporate the various media types.  MEDEA also appreciates the need and advantages in including media-rich resources in the learning environments that exist in the technologically advanced world we presently live in.

The MEDEA Awards were first introduced in late 2007 with the first award recipients announced in 2008.  This competition is conducted annually with all entries being judged by a team of expert jury members.  The 2011 MEDEA Awards received 115 entries from 28 different countries.  The award recipients announced recently included some interesting and noteworthy award winners.

The winner in the MEDEA Professional Production Award 2011 category was a Belgian entry, Monkey Tales Games.  This 3D video game is a math learning resource and was created by die Keure Educatief and Larian Studios in Belgium in 2011.  The game is composed of five high interest and relevant age-specific games with various themes aimed at different age groups:  The Princess of Sundara (7+ age), The Museum of Miscellany (8+ age), The Abbey of Aviath (9+ age), The Castle of Draconion (10+ age) and The Valley of the Jackal (age 11 and up).  This educational game may be used in a classroom, but it is mainly intended for use at home to encourage independent practice of math concepts learned in the classroom.

The Merchant of Venice is the title of the 2011 MEDEA User-Generated Award 2011 category.  This is an online educational game created in 2011 by Professor Uwe Gutwirth, University of Education Salzburg (PH-Salzburg) in Austria.  The Merchant of Venice requires at least two teams to play as the players taken on the role of Venetian merchants who must earn money through trading with foreign countries and building wealth with their earnings.  The first team to reach the Rialto Square with no debt wins the game and is accepted into the Hall of Fame.  This game is intended for use by Accounting students to support concepts they are learning such as double-entry bookkeeping, financial decision-making, report interpretation, and teamwork in an interesting and engaging way.

The award recipient in the European Collaboration Award 2011 was The European Chain Reaction by Qworzó Primary School in Belgium.   This is an eTwinning project (a collaboration project of European schools) that brought together primary schools from 13 different countries in an effort to create, film, and upload a chain reaction influenced by the notable humor artists Rube-Goldberg and Robert Storm Petersen.  This project aims to teach primary school children about science and technology in a fun and memorable way.

If you would like to read about the other finalists in the MEDEA Awards this year, you may visit the MEDEA website at http://www.medea-awards.com/home .  Here you may also view the show reel of the 2011 MEDEA Award winners or read more detailed information about the current award recipients.

With the holidays quickly approaching, many parents are searching for the perfect gifts for their children.  One of the most popular gifts among boys between the ages of eight and seventeen is the video game or computer game.  While a computer game or video game may seem like an easy gift choice, many gift givers worry about giving a child a game designated VVG, or Violent Video Game.  Apparently many caregivers worry that VVGs cause violent or aggressive behavior in the children that play these games.  Many people will be surprised to find out that recent research indicates violent computer games do not bring about violent or aggressive behavior in the children that play them.

In a recent article on the Time Magazine website, Christopher J. Ferguson discusses the research debunking the VVG equals violent children myth. Ferguson also just conducted a longitudinal study that followed 165 ten to fourteen year old boys and girls spanning a three-year period.  His study found no link between VVGs and aggressive behavior in young people.

Ferguson also makes reference to several other research projects that find that children who play VVG are not more violent than other children and they are not harmed in any other identifiable fashion.  For example there was a recent study conducted by Maria von Salisch and colleagues (Preference for Violent Electronic Games and Aggressive Behavior among Children: The Beginning of the Downward Spiral? Published in Media Psychology) that found no correlation between VVG and aggression.  If you would like to read Mr. Ferguson’s full article, you may view it here.  The short of it seems to be that parents and caregivers can relax if they are fretting over whether or not to buy a young gaming enthusiast in their life the latest copy of the popular, albeit violent, video games such as Modern Warfare 3 or Skyrim.

If you are someone who enjoys games designated at VVG or just gaming in general, a career in the computer game design industry may suit you well.  Many people in the field of computer game design began simply as fans of gaming themselves.  If you think a career in the computer game design industry might be for you, Gatlin International has an eLearning course to help you realize your goals.  Gatlin International’s Video Game Design course and Virtual Internship Experience will allow you to learn computer game design at your own pace.

This award winning online course and training program is an appropriate starting point for students who seek a professional career as a game designer and developer. It is also well suited for enthusiastic amateurs and gamers looking to explore this exciting field as a recreational endeavor.  Combining concepts in computer graphics, computer aided instruction and marketing, Gatlin International’s Video Game Design course is easy to use.  There is no prior game or graphics programming background required to enroll in this course; students will acquire the skills needed through Gatlin’s project centered Virtual Internship.  Your daily work in a game design job will depend largely on the specific job path you take. You can choose to focus your work on any phase of the computer game design process, from the initial planning, to designing characters and environments, to programming.  To register for this course or to view more details, visit the Gatlin International website today.

If you have a professional or personal interest in the world of eLearning, you already know that there can be an overwhelming number of new eLearning terms circulating at any given time.  This makes sense due to dynamic nature of almost any area of technology, but keeping up with all of the jargon can become quite a task.  For example, the term eLearning can be characterized by specific delivery methods such as blended learning, rapid learning, mobile learning, and social learning. Today, we are going to explore these four popular methods of eLearning and explain how each method is unique.

Blended Learning

Generally when people use the term blended learning, they are referring to a combination of eLearning and face to face instruction.  Blended learning can refer to a single course or an entire educational program.  This means that one course can be made up of both face to face instruction in conjunction with some type of online course content.  Or, an education or training program might be labeled as blended learning if the courses within that program are comprised of both brick and mortar classroom instruction and virtual courses.  An organization may use a blended learning model to deliver instruction to increase flexibility, access, efficiency, and cost savings.

Rapid Learning

The term rapid learning can be a little tricky because it is often heard to describe both a method of creating eLearning courses and a speed at which people are instructed in an eLearning environment.  When used in reference to course creation, rapid learning basically means that the course was created using a quick method such as a narrated slide show or Adobe flash file and made available for course participants online.  If the term rapid learning is being used to describe the learning pace of a course or program, you can usually assume that the course or program itself is brief in duration and the lessons themselves are very short and to the point.  Rapid learning, in both senses, is best suited for course material or subject matter that is in a fairly constant state of evolution thereby requiring the course and material to be frequently updated.

Mobile Learning

Many people mistakenly think that the terms eLearning and mobile learning (also referred to as mLearning) are interchangeable.  The term eLearning is most often used when the coursework is delivered via a computer connected to the Internet.  Mobile learning describes coursework that is accessed using a device that is more portable than even a laptop, such as a smartphone, tablet, or mp3 player.  Course content can be sent to a mobile device in the form of text files, image files, audio files, or even by the mobile device’s communication tools such as phone calls, video calls, or email.

Social Learning

Social learning is considered to be an informal eLearning method, but with the popularity of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogging, it definitely warrants exploration.  Social learning is essentially learning that takes place by interacting with other people on some type of social media network.  This includes anything from following the Twitter feed or blog of someone considered to be a subject matter expert in a field you are interested in to clicking on a link in your Facebook newsfeed to an informative article.  While social learning may not currently be a formalized way of delivering course content, experts say we should not discount social learning for the future.