Ellen Burns-Johnson

The buzz around game-based learning experiences (also called educational games and “serious” games) is getting noticeably louder. Games are showing up in physical and virtual classrooms of all sorts: not just in K-12, but also in government and corporate training, nonprofits, healthcare, and higher education. It’s an added challenge to make a game with authentic learning at its core. In this talk, Ellen Burns-Johnson will go over some techniques for creating compelling games for learning.

• Analyze the learning aspects of different popular games
• Align game design to learning outcomes
• Brainstorm some ideas for a learning game
• Learn to think “outside the quiz”

Ellen Burns-Johnson is an award winning learning experience designer (LXD) and consultant with more than a decade of experience in the education and training industries. She was a level designer and “explosion czar” on Widget Satchel and a designer/producer on Dicer and Clasp: Dungeon Skedaddle! for GGJ 2018. Ellen is also one of the three permanent hosts on the Nice Games Club weekly podcast. Ellen lives in Saint Paul with her husband and two dogs. She is terrible at racing games, always picks the sniper build, and loves a good puzzle/platformer.

Altspace Fieldtrip

Martin Grider (& Zach Wendt)

Altspace is one of the many Social VR platforms that has emerged in the last few years, but you don’t need to be in VR to use it! In this interactive talk, Martin will lead IGDATC in an exploration of:

• How to find things in Altspace
• Some basic Altspace features
• How the VR & HCI meeting has been using Altspace
• An Altspace “space” for IGDATC

You are encouraged to install Altspace before the meeting if you can!

Martin Grider is one of the folks who runs our IGDA Twin Cities chapter. He’s also a board game designer and digital game developer working in Unity and native iOS technologies.

Watch on Youtube