Virtual Worlds III has Craig Reynolds and Ken Perlin lined up for keynotes (two incredibly influential academics, Reynolds work on ‘boids has had a huge influence on agent based AI in games, and Perlin’s impact in graphics has been immense).

No keynotes announced yet for VS Games, but is supported by the EU FP7 GALA network of excellence, so will be guaranteed to bring along many of Europe’s top games and learning researchers.

Download here the whole Call for Papers as PDF.

Submission Types

• Full Technical Papers (10-14 pages)
• Short Technical Papers (4-8 pages)
• Poster Papers (max. 4 pages)
• Demonstrations / Interactive Installations (max. 4 pages)
• Industry Full/Short Papers, Posters, Demonstrations (same page restrictions as above)
• Tutorial / Workshop submissions (max. 4 pages)
• Doctoral Consortium submissions (max. 4 pages)

Submissions must be in Springer LNCS format. All submissions will be reviewed by the conference’s international program committee. Accepted papers will be published as technical papers, poster papers, demo papers or extended abstracts. Authors might be asked by the program committee to resubmit their paper in a different category. Extended versions of selected papers will be invited for a special issue of the “Entertainment Computing” journal.

Important Dates

March 10^th, 2012 Workshop proposal submission
April 1^st, 2012 Full/short paper submission
May 20^th, 2012 Notification for full/short papers
May 30^th, 2012 Poster/demo/installation/doctoral consortium submission
June 15^th, 2012 Notification for posters/demos/installations/doctoral consortium
June 22^nd, 2012 Camera ready submission (all submission types)
Sep. 26^th to 29^th, 2012 Conference: University Bremen, Germany

Topics

We invite authors to submit original papers, posters or demos in all areas of Entertainment Computing including (but not limited to):

Technologies for Entertainment Computing

• Computer Graphics
• Digital Audio
• Human Machine Interfaces
• Artificial Intelligence
• Integrated Development
• Computer, Video, Console and Internet Games

Design and Creative Environment

• Game Design
• Interactive Sound
• Graphic Design
• Art and Novel Media
• New Genres of Entertainment Technology

Advanced Applications and Platforms

• Augmented, Virtual or Mixed Reality
• Ubiquitous / Pervasive Entertainment
• Entertainment and Ambiant Intelligence
• Robots and Cyberpets
• Mobile Entertainment
• Self-Reflecting Entertainment Computing

Application Domains of Entertainment Computing

• Games / Serious Games
• Interactive TV and Cinema
• Edutainment
• Authoring and Communication
• Healthcare
• Simulation
• Digital Entertainment and Sports
• Digital Entertainment and Pleasure
• Games for Special Audiences / User Groups (elderly, childern, people with mental or physical disabilities)
• Human Computation Games

Theory

• Impact of Entertainment Technology on Users and Society
• TransMedia, Art and Entertainment
• Methodologies, Paradigms, Tools for Entertainment Applications
• Narratives / Digital Storytelling
• Social Impact, Social Networking, Sound and Music

Technical Papers

Technical papers are the main medium for presenting new research results to the community at ICEC. Submissions should describe novel unpublished work relating to one or more of the topics listed above.

Papers must be submitted in the Springer LNCS format (see below). Papers must be written in English. As to account for the expected variety in submissions to this multidisciplinary conference, paper lengths may vary within a certain limit. Short paper submissions have to be between 4 and 8 pages in length. Full paper submissions have to be between 10 and 14 pages in length. In any case, reviewers will be instructed to judge the contribution of a paper relative to its length. Typical contributions presenting significant research advances/results should be around 12 pages in length (Full Technical Papers). Contributions presenting more focused approaches/results should be around 6 pages in length (Short Technical Papers). Papers with exceeding length relative to their contribution will be rejected. All papers will be reviewed by the ICEC 2012 program committee. Accepted papers will be divided into two categories, long presentations and short presentations. The committee may accept papers conditionally or for a different category. Authors may be asked to either shorten or lengthen their paper accordingly. Authors may also include a video (optional) in their submission. Video files should be at most 50MB in size. See the general submission information for more details about preparing your submission.

Posters

Posters provide an interactive forum in which authors can present work to conference attendees during special poster sessions. Posters provide an opportunity to describe new work or work that is still in progress and will be more lightly reviewed than papers. A poster submission should be in the form of a four-page paper in Springer LNCS format, describing the research problem, contribution, and value to ICEC attendees, submitted as a PDF file. Authors may also include a video (optional). Video files should be at most 50MB in size. See the general submission information for more details about preparing your submission. Posters will be displayed on cork boards during specific sessions. We expect to be able to accommodate posters of up to 3 feet by 4 feet (portrait format), so we suggest using that size or smaller. Additional details concerning the poster format will be made available following author notification.

Demonstrations and Interactive Installations

Peer-reviewed demonstrations show early implementations of novel, interesting, and important entertainment computing concepts or systems, or can serve to showcase commercial products not previously described in the research literature. At the ICEC, demonstrations also encompass interactive works of art or installations of interest to the entertainment computing community. Demonstrations should be brief, so that they can be shown repeatedly. We particularly encourage demonstrations with which attendees can interact. A demonstration or installation submission consists of: 1) an extended abstract that should be no more than four Springer-format pages in length, 2) an accompanying video which should be at most 50MB in size, and 3) a supplement document with a list of a) technical requirements including electrical and connectivity needs and b) space requirements including display and footprint needs. By default, demos will have a table, chairs and internet connection available. By their nature, interactive installations are intended for larger, potentially public spaces. We will try to accommodate for the needs of these types of installations, but please include a minimal set-up so that we know the range of requirements that we will need to meet. Successful demonstration/installation submissions will be contacted by the chair to confirm the availability of the requested resources. The abstract, digital video and requirements supplement must be submitted electronically.

Industry Papers / Posters / Demonstrations

Industry papers, posters, and demonstrations are intended to increase the knowledge transfer between academia and industry in entertainment computing. While regular contributions are mainly reviewed for their scientific novelty and contribution, industry papers should focus more on practical solutions and results that are of immediate interest to the industry or especially facilitate communication between industry and academia. Possible examples are (but are not limited to):

• Novel and interesting applications (both commercial and non-profit)
• New frameworks, tools, or libraries
• Business models (especially for serious games)
• Development best practices
• Novel input devices

Industry contributions should follow the same guidelines as regular contributions in terms of layout, pages, additional material etc. (see above). We specifically invite industry members to consider submitting a poster or demo to present live working systems.
If you work in the industry and would like to make a submission, but you are not used to working with scientific paper templates and publication procedures, please do not hesitate to contact us for assistance.

Tutorials / Workshops

We invite proposals for workshops that will be held in conjunction with ICEC 2012. We invite proposals in all areas of entertainment computing (see conference topics listed above) and particularly welcome proposals that will focus on and promote discussion on new and emerging trends. Workshop proposals are restricted to four pages in length (in the Springer LNCS format) and must include the following information:

• Contact information (name, affiliation, address, phone number/fax, and email) of the workshop organizer(s)
• Relevant CV information of the workshop leader(s)
• Workshop title
• Workshop objective
• Background/relevance of workshop topic
• Expected workshop outcomes (publications, activates, “take-home” skills development, etc.)
• Names of potential workshop participants and expected number of participants
• Workshop due dates (schedule of submission and review of submitted material for your workshop)

Workshops can be scheduled for either half a day or a full day (please indicate your choice). Please submit your workshop proposal via the electronic conference system.

Doctoral Consortium

The ICEC 2012 Doctoral Consortium provides an opportunity for doctoral students to explore and develop their research interests in an interdisciplinary workshop, under the guidance of a panel of distinguished researchers. We invite students who feel they would benefit from this kind of feedback on their dissertation work to apply for this unique opportunity to share their work with students in a similar situation as well as senior researchers in the field. The strongest candidates will be those who have a clear idea and an area, and have made some progress, but who are not so far along that they can no longer make changes. Also, as well as stating how you will gain from acceptance, both you and your advisor should be clear on what you can contribute to the Doctoral Consortium.
The Consortium has the following objectives:

• Provide a supportive setting for feedback on students’ current research and guidance on future research directions
• Offer each student comments and fresh perspectives on their work from researchers and students outside their own institution
• Promote the development of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research
• Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events

Current graduate students pursuing a PhD project who would benefit from detailed workshop discussions of their doctoral research should submit a single PDF file consisting of:

1. A 4-page extended abstract of your thesis work in Springer LNCSformat. Clearly specifying:

• Originality of the work with respect to current concepts and techniques
• Importance of the work with respect to fundamental issues and themes in entertainment computing
• Results to date and their validity
• Contribution of the work (expected and/or achieved) to entertainment computing

2. Your CV
3. A one-paragraph statement of expected benefits of participation for both yourself and the other consortium participants (i.e., what will you contribute as well as gain).

Submission Guidelines

Papers and abstracts should be submitted through the submission web site in PDF format. All materials will be reviewed and processed electronically. The information about the work and a contact author’s email address, mailing address, and phone number must be submitted through the submission website by the deadline (see above). Submissions should not be anonymized for review. Movies or other materials can also be submitted through the submission web site. The movies must not exceed 50 megabytes in size. Any additional materials must also be received by the deadline. All submissions will be reviewed by the ICEC 2012 program committee.

http://www.virtual-worlds.net/vw2012/

Dear colleagues,

We are delighted to announce and call for papers for the Third International Conference on Virtual Worlds (VW’2012) which will be held from July 3 to 5, 2012 in Paris (La Défense).

Background

A Virtual World can be defined as a computer-simulated environment with its own physical and biological laws, populated by dynamic interacting entities such as artificial creatures and human avatars. Whereas Virtual Reality largely focuses on the design of 3D immersive spaces, and Artificial Life on the modeling and study of life-like systems, Virtual Worlds embrace both dimensions by synthesizing an entire digital universe. Their design and realization requires competency in various fields from Virtual Reality and Physics to Artificial Life and Ecology, Computer Graphics, High Performance Computing, and more.

Virtual Worlds have many applications in 3D simulation, computer games and online business. However, the approach is still broader and more fundamental. It also addresses the crucial problem of elucidating the constitutive principles by which large numbers of interacting elements can self-organize and produce emergent phenomena as they are observed in the natural world. Therefore the study of Virtual Worlds is particularly concerned with the formal basis of synthetic universes and offers a promising new way to contribute to the understanding of Nature and of complex systems in general.

Subjects

Topics of interest for the conference include, but are not limited to:

Virtual World applications

-           Video games and entertainment

-           Educational, medical and business solutions

-           Virtual economies

-           Social and philosophical implications

-           Virtual Worlds and Ecology

Virtual World technologies

-           High performance and low latency solutions

Virtual and Augmented Reality

-           “Avatarization”

-           Human-machine interfaces

Virtual World fundamentals

-           Artificial physics and chemistries

-           Complex systems, emergence, self-organization

Artificial Life

-           Artificial life and ecosystems

-           Evolution, co-evolution and adaptation

-           Collective intelligence, cooperation, communication

Artificial creatures

-           Avatars

-           Virtual creatures

-           Intelligent agents

-           Conversational agents

Submissions

The Program Committee of VW’2012 is looking forward to high quality papers on substantial, original, and unpublished research.

Full papers may be submitted electronically from 16 October 2011 to 16 January 2012 via the conference website.

All submitted work will be assigned for double blind peer review. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to register to the conference and present their work.

Papers must be submitted in LNCS format and be up to 10 pages in length including abstract, figures and references. Formatting instructions are available at :  http://www.springer.com/lncs

Short papers (4 pages including abstract, figures and references) can also be submitted and selected ones will be presented as posters during demos session.

Artistic and technical demos are also welcome and can be submitted by contacting alainlioret@gmail.com before 12 December 2011.

Final demos has to be set up before 05 May 2012.

Important Dates

Paper submission deadline:               16 January 2012

Notification of acceptance :                05 March 2012

Early registration before :                   15 March 2012

Final paper deadline:                          05 April 2012

Conference days :                              03 July to 05 July 2012

Demos and Posters

Short Paper submission deadline:     16 January 2012

Notification of acceptance :                05 March 2012

Early registration before :                   15 March 2012

Final poster and demo deadline:        05 April 2012

We look forward to welcoming you at the conference!

Steering Committee

- Alain Lioret,  Université Paris 8 (Chairman)

Contact : alainlioret@gmail.com

- Jean-Claude Heudin , Institut International du Multimédia (Co-chairman)

Contact : jean-claude.heudin@devinci.fr

- Stefan Bornhofen, EISTI (Co-chairman)

Contact : sb@eisti.fr

- Jean-Claude Torrel, Institut International du Multimédia (Co-chairman)

Contact : jean-claude.torrel@devinci.fr

Provisional Program Committee

Bruce Damer, DigitalSpace, USA

Jeffrey Ventrella, CDM, Vancouver, Canada

Sébastien Barot, Bioemco,  France

Evelyne Lutton, INRIA, France

Emmanuel Cayla, ESTP, France

Kevin Korb, Monash, Australia

Marc Métivier, Univ. Paris Descartes, France

Tom Barbalet, BIOTA, USA

Frederic Fol Leymarie , University of London, GB

Pierre Berger, Paris ACM Siggraph, France

Penousal Machado, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Jon Mc Cormack, Monash, Australia

Maciej Komosinski, Poznan University, Poland

Mathew Lewis, Ohio State University, USA

Robyn Taylor, Alberta, Canada

Simon Richir, Ensam Angers, France

Marc Ebner, Univ. Tübingen, Germany

Gerald de Jong, Darwin @Home, USA

Joseph Nechvatal,  BIOTA, France

Alan Dorin, Monash, Australia

Daniel Thalmann, EPFL, Suisse

Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, Miralab, Suisse

Tatsuo Unemi, Tokyo, Japan

Leonel Moura, Portugal

Joseph Nechvatal, School of Visual Arts, USA

**Please Twit, share, post, or 1+ the following to help me promote virtual world language learning. Thank you so much! On with the show!**

I will be presenting at a fairly major international online conference next week and thought I would pass on this information to you. Many of you are aware I have been researching ways to use virtual worlds like Second Life for language learning. In the past few years I have grown my community, Cypris Chat (http://cyprischat.org), to over 500 active members from more than 40 countries. The conference I will be presenting at is focused on global awareness and education. I think it will be very exciting to show how a community like Cypris Chat has brought the world together with one main goal in mind, to learn or teach English. I hope this presentation will help promote this fantastic medium for educating students.

WHEN: Tuesday, November 15^th from 10:00pm to 11:00pm JST – 1:00pm – 2:00pm GMT

WHERE: Blackboard Collaborate link will be provided here on the 15^th: http://globaleducation.ning.com/page/globaledcon11-schedule-gmt-9-1 Please find my presentation in your time zone (Cypris Chat) I will be on Facebook during the presentation. Cypris Chat members can help you on our Facebook group page and chat channel here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/58820483559/

CONFERENCE INFORMATION

The 2011 Global Education Conference will be held November 14 – 18, online and free. Sessions will take place in multiple time zones and multiple languages over the five days. The 2010 Global Education Conference had 15,028 unique logins and presentations from 62 countries.

To be kept informed of the latest conference news and updates, please join this network. The sessions schedule is now live and available in multiple time zones HERE.

http://globaleducation.ning.com (Notice the featured discussions. Mine is featured…wow)

Over 5,000 registered attendees. Hundreds of presenters over five days. 19 keynote speakers.

The conference sessions are being held in Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate), and can be accessed live from any personal computer. (All sessions will also be recorded and posted quickly after the conference.) All sessions are free to attend, and the links to the sessions will go live in the schedule when the conference starts.

To check that your computer is ready for Blackboard Collaborate, please click here. “Step 1″ will indicate if you have a version of Java that is compatible, and then “Step 2″ lets you actually go into a test session. We encourage you to do this in advance of the conference. If you have any difficulties, you can ask for help in the WeCollaborate.com user community.

MY (rough) PRESENTATION PROPOSAL

Session Title: Cypris Chat – Virtual World English Learning Community in Second Life

Session Strand (use the “tag”): 2011Teachers

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Your Name and Title: Mike McKay / Professor Merryman – Adjunct English Professor

Your Library, School, or Organization Name: Mukogawa Women’s University

Name(s) of Co-Presenter(s):

Session Description: Cypris Chat is a not-for-profit English learning community based in the virtual world of Second Life (http://secondlife.com). Visit my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/SLmerryman) to see videos which describe the community in detail. We have over 500 active members from more than 40 countries. The purpose of our community is to show how virtual worlds can make language learning immersive and real. We provide an environment which is friendly, safe, anonymous and interactive making it the perfect environment for experimenting with the language. Friendships and relationships have developed that will last a lifetime which shows that such a concept changes lives. This community certainly proves that global communication can be helped through the use of technology. Come learn more about what we do and why we do it.

Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Japan

Your Bio: Mike McKay (aka Professor Merryman) is an adjunct professor of English at Mukogawa Women’s university in Nishinomiya, Japan. He is an American expat and holds a Master of Education with an emphasis in Technology. His research is focused on providing his students with more realistic opportunities for learning and practicing English. Technology has proven to be the best medium for him based on the fact that living in another English speaking country is simply not feasible. He hopes to bring the world to Japan and provide learners of all ages, young and old, with a place to learn, explore, live and enjoy in English. The results of his research could be applied to all languages. His presentation is meant to share his experiences and what one could do to begin learning about this wonderful teaching medium.

Link to GlobalEdCon11 Session Proposal (full URL with http://): http://globaleducation.ning.com/forum/topics/cypris-chat-virtual-world-english-learning-community-in-second

Target Audience: Educators, Educational Technologists, Teachers, Parents, Secondary+ Students, Language Learners

• Lecturers, tutors and course leaders who design assessment and feedback for their learners
• Intermediaries with a role in supporting practitioners with assessment, and technology-enhanced assessment (learning technologists, e-learning/ILT champions, staff developers, educational developers, academic registry)

The important dates are:

• Paper submission: 30th September 2011
• Notification of acceptance: 14th October 2011
• Final paper submission: 28th October 2011
• Summit: 28th-29th November 2011

Topics of Interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Blended/Hybrid learning
• Personalised learning
• Intelligent agents in learning
• Edutainment & Game-Based Learning
• Location-based and contextual learning
• Immersive Educational technology markets & challenges
• Virtual and mixed-reality for education
• Educational software/hardware
• Intelligent classroom
• Virtual laboratories and tools
• Pedagogy for the Internet Age
• Innovations in the teaching laboratory
• Student assessment in high-tech teaching environments
• Cultural dimensions of educational technology
• Educational technology innovations
• Social/Collaborative learning
• Smart educational environment
• Teaching strategies to maximise benefits of emerging technology
• Future research issues for Immersive Education

More details on the call for papers page.

3 days of conference and 2 nights of insufficient sleep = hazy recollections.

The ALT Games & Learning Special Interest Group had cake, and are going to recommend a game of the month to go with a monthly reading group.The group is open to all alt members, and we welcomed a few new members who are very new to this research area – all aboard!

Flexible service delivery uses words like ‘enterprise’ a lot. This stuff is really really important. Unfortunately I think few people in the audience were likely in any position to have any impact on their institution at the level presented here. Sorry Alex and other JISC folk – this was just too removed from my role.

Day 2 lunch had some really good food. I liked the lamb, but perhaps some more thought could have gone into provision of some kind of eating implement?

Karen Cator presented an optimistic and hopeful view of technology helping to drive change and improvement in American education. But with a fragmented system over 50 largely independant states, with public, charter and home schooling, with anti-union actions dominating the education debate in the US more say than anything that is actually to do with education, etc. the challenges are certainly substantial.

If John Cook wore glasses would he get mistaken for Vic Reeves?

Sponsor sessions are very worthwhile. They are to be greatly thanked for supporting the event, and provide a good opportunity to catch up with email.

In Yorkshire, they smoke salmon somewhere inland, miles from the coast.

If you think you have trouble getting staff and students to use technology effectively, try Bhutan.

Sometimes when giving a demo, you really just have to ‘present’ the demo – hands-on is nice, but not always practical.

John Naughton showed that you *can* deliver an engaging keynote, even if you are just reading your speech from your iPad. I suspect that this relies on having the right speech style and especially on preparing a good speech. A good closing keynote is a good time for reflection on what has been happening – and to let the audience try to identify the patterns of change likely to emerge moving forward.

Sugata Mitra makes some closing remarks. Apologies to Chris Wilson (whoever he is).

Quiet carriage on the way back – at least as noisy as the non-quiet coaches. Other than no phones. Don’t really see the point.

• Exhibit from MIT. (wrap anything online into a learning object)
• Moodle. Moodle. Moodle. (Enough said)
• Peerwise (let students write the questions)
• PollEverywhere (forget those bespoke audience response systems)

Irrelevant recommendations I picked up or gave out during the gala dinner:

Petra Haden sings The Who Sell Out is the definitive version of the album. (Pete Townsend is a fan, btw)
Also listen to: Randolph’s Leap, Bear Bones, The Banana Sessions, Kitty the Lion and Burns Unit. (To which I’ll now add Zoey Van Goey).
Watch:
Mystery Men (The best superhero film ever???)
Star Wars Uncut – The awesome/awful and everything in between crowdsourced remake of the original Star Wars film. In 15 second segments.

Discussion generally focussed on OER as content – though Diana Laurillard’s question effectively reminded us that OER also includes instructional designs, teaching plans, and so on – she placed more emphasis on how content is used to provide ‘education’. I guess her motivation in asking this question is essentially that which has driven work in systems like LAMS which aim to make it easier to plan, manage and share sets of learning activities for specific lessons.
But I think to dismiss content-focussed as effectively libraries rather than schools denies how useful libraries can be in helping develop educational programs. The libraries of images on Wikimedia Commons, videos on YouTube, detail on Wikipedia, etc. have helped me develop numerous sets of lectures and notes over the past while.

On passing the JORUM stand, I added another star to the feature request chart to the many already placed on ‘discoverability’. It seemed to be the clear winner by Tuesday lunch time – obviously I’m not the only tutor who has found searching for useful resources on JORUM to be a frustrating (I would say hostile) experience. And when I search JORUM I only get access to the relatively small amount of content on that particular repository – why isn’t this stuff indexed on the OERCommons? Because we want to force people to waste time wandering from repository to repository?

Building on this, my own (unasked – perhaps for next year) question is whether we could/should be thinking more about how learners, rather than educators, might find useful resources. We aren’t always doing a good job helping the latter group, perhaps if we focus on how the learners themselves would find the resources we might do a better job. If I post my content on a blog or other dedicated site, is that better or worse for promoting reuse? Basically, can we just throw stuff online and trust in Google to let people find it?

This might not sound effective, my own experience shows otherwise. During the last academic session I posted some of my own notes on 3D graphics programming to a dedicated blog I created for the purpose on wordpress.com. These are fairly fragmentary as much of the course is based on textbooks and materials that are in copyright. One set of notes to help students install the software libraries required was also posted to scribd, with a link included to download some related files. Less than a year later, there have been almost 7000 views of the Scribd document and well over 1000 downloads of the files. I don’t think my 50 students could have been responsible for too many of these downloads.

Are students finding these notes using Google? Are instructors pointing the students to the notes? Does it matter? If I had posted the material on JORUM Would I have achieved the same impact (I doubt it!)? If I had posted this material on JORUM as well as the blog would that have increased the impact?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I have my suspicions. None of this is to argue that we shouldn’t have repositories like JORUM are useless, but I it poses fundamental questions over how they should work.

To post stuff online we need somewhere to post it. Online cloud services are not always suitable – file size limits, registration requirements, subscription fees, etc. can pose problems that OER repositories can and do solve. But experience shows that the meta-data capture on systems like JORUM is either not up to job of supporting discoverability or that people are simply incapable of entering useful meta-data. Maybe we should forget that, and just expose the contents to the search engines, because I have little faith that we can do better than Google.

Date:                     17^th-19^th March (come for one day – or all three!)

Location:             Dundee College (17^th-18^th), University of Abertay (19^th)

Website:             www.gametolearn.org

Cost:                      FREE!

HI,

I’d like to take just 5 minutes of your time to invite you to Scotland’s largest Games-based Learning Conference: ‘Game to Learn: Take 2!’ This year’s event, which we’re organising in partnership with Learning & Teaching Scotland builds on last year’s success – growing almost 3 times in size, with a staggering 50 keynote, seminar and hands-on workshop sessions over the 3 days!

As with the majority of events the JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East run – Game to Learn: Take 2! is FREE to attend! This is only possible through the generosity of the hosting institutions, organising partners and those delivering presentations and workshops.

Scotland is a pioneer when it comes to games-based learning – largely through the efforts of enthusiastic teaching staff, who are willing to explore new ways of engaging students with activities designed for learning, with a little fun and competition thrown in for good measure. This is all helped by the fact that the country is a thriving home to some of the world’s leading games developers (chances are your students have played a game on developed in Scotland on their Wiis, Xboxes or PS3s.), and organisations like the Consolarium.

Game to Learn: Take 2! brings together staff from schools, college and universities – and believe me, we all have something to learn from each other. There’s fantastic work going on in each sector that could easily be applied to the other two (check out the sessions on ‘storywriting’ and ‘universe quests’). We have a range of excellent speakers – from Nick Simon, head of BBC Scotland’s Learning & New Media, who’ll show you how the BBC take games very seriously, to Paul Blumenfed – a 2^nd Year student from the University of Strathclyde who’s leading a brilliant workshop on Virtual Trader (I’d definitely recommend going to see Paul – if you’re lucky enough to snag a place at his session, they’re going fast!).

And we know that finances are on everyone’s mind just now, which is why we have Daniel Livingstone from the University of the West of Scotland talking about how games-based approaches an be affordable as well as fun, and a range of games (both commercial and completely free) being demonstrated!

Oh – and if you think that you have a good idea for a game, then why not apply for a place at our ‘Codebash’ on the Thursday? We have 10 games developers who will be teaming up with one subject specialist to design an educational game in 24 hours (which will then be presented on the Friday, with prizes for outstanding examples). You don’t have to have any experience with games development – just a willingness to experiment and see what’s possible! Just send me an email at codebash@rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk if you’re interested (telling me your name, subject area and institution). We’ll announce the lucky 10 subject specialists on the 28^th of February!

Okay, so a brief summary of the three days (remember, you can come along to one or all three!):

Thursday, March 17^th (Dundee College)

Codebash – you know you want to…

Friday, March 18^th (Dundee College)

The first day of the conference proper – with a 120+ delegates and a range of presentations, seminars and hands-on sessions examining how games-based education can have a positive effect on learning. The target audience for this is schools, colleges and universities.

Saturday, March 19^th (University of Abertay)

A more schools-focused event (though all are welcome!) with 150+ delegates looking at how teachers can apply games-based resources in the classroom. More hands-on sessions and time to discover how these resources can be best implemented as part of normal curriculum delivery.

Interested? I can’t see how you wouldn’t want to come along… I know schedules are tight and finding the time to come along might be difficult, but trust me – this is one conference that you do want to come along to. I guarantee you’ll be thanking me at the end of the day.

Look forward to seeing you there!

REGISTER YOUR PLACE AT GAME TO LEARN: TAKE 2!

Kenji Lamb