Speaking at MATI on December 1st

I'll be giving a presentation at the MATI labs on December 1st, at 12. It will mostly be about the research results, but I'll include a fairly detailed rant on the current state of educational video games.

EDIT: the presentation can be seen here (french only)

Physica in the press

UQAM and CREO did a press conference on Physica, the virtual world island for which the main game is Mecanika. Some articles followed. I wasn't expecting the metro journal to pick up on this!

http://www.journalmetro.com/plus/article/985961
http://www.nouvelles.uqam.ca/uqamca/item/1841-le-labmecas-lance-trois-jeux-video.html

http://www.keek.fr/article/2970-decouvrir-la-physique-en-s-amusant

http://jeuxserieux.ac-creteil.fr/?p=862

UQAM article on Mecanika

We're about to launch the Physica Island, where Mecanika is hosted. The university PR machine just got started. Here's the brief article!

And we're live!

The main game I've been working on in the last 6 months is officially out. It looks like we've got some pretty good comments so far.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/576762

Games for Change 2011 conference

Here's a video of the conference I gave in June at G4C 2011 on Mecanika. You can see I was pretty stressed out (I estimated 200 people in the crowd), so pardon the mumbled words!

http://vimeo.com/27304765

Mecanika available in English

I just realized I never posted the link to the english version: http://gameforscience.ca/physica/

The guidebooks and english videos will be available by the end of summer 2011.

Mecanika at GLS

I went to Games+Learning+Society to present Mecanika’s impact in Quebec classrooms, and was surprised by the amount of physics games I saw there. Here’s the description. 

It turns out that most physics games out there do not seem to have results as strong as what we've recorded. I just submitted proceedings on the actual results, which I'll link to here later. But briefly: the game caused a large measurable increase on the Force Concept Inventory, and that effect was observed whether or not we added classroom debriefings and detailed guidebook activities about the game. These results are pretty solid since we used a control group and pre/post tests. 

So my goal right now is to put this game in front of as much teachers as I can, for free. They don't even have to look at the game themselves! As long as they ask their students to play it at home, they should see a difference in students Newtonian conceptions. 

Magazine article

Affaires+ published an article on the life of being a contractor, and wanted me to be part of it. Here’s a sneak peak! (French only)

French version of Mécanika out!

I finally got the French version of Mecanika out to the Physics island of Science-en-Jeu (English version coming soon). I'm currently using the game in an experiment with approx. 200 students, and the learning outcome as measured by the Force Concept Inventory will be available this summer of 2011.

Essayez Mécanika!!