Category Archives: History/Government Games

Encyclopedia of Mechanics

Let me begin by saying thank you to all the presenters, participants, and attendees of the inaugural CUNY Games Festival! We’re pretty darn pleased with how it turned out and hope to see you at the next one.

I received a few questions from educators during the conference about game mechanics–specifically, how to learn more about them. It’s true that having a wide breadth of knowledge about mechanics can only serve to improve your ability to make games, and although it might be best to learn about mechanics by playing more games, I have definitely found Board Game Geek’s Encyclopedia of mechanics to be helpful. And so I share it with you!

http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic

Grad Center’s ASHP/CML is a Digital Media Competition Stage 1 Winner!

Speaking of badges, good news folks: the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning is a Stage 1 winner in the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Teacher Mastery badge competition (whew, that was a mouthful).  Our proposal is to develop a badge system for an online professional development community in which teacher-learners develop their skills as history educators, instructional designers and peer collaborators. We are working with game developers and education researchers on the Stage 2 proposal which describes the functionality of the badges in more detail. And, if all goes very well, we’ll be heading to San Francisco at the end of February to pitch the project in front of a live panel of judges. Whatever happens, we are learning the ins and outs of badging as a way to motivate and recognize life-long learning.