Article Archives - Page 43 of 47

Prisoner of Echo Classroom Activity

Looking for ways to get your students excited about sound? The activity below is included in our free game-based learning curriculum and can be used in conjunction with sound and amplitude learning game Prisoner of Echo. Try out this fun classroom activity with your students and view more sound and amplitude curriculum activities here! Lab: Sound…

August 3, 2016 // Kat Shanahan

Filament Games | Educational Game Developer

Game Art Live Stream Recap

I had the pleasure of joining Game Art Team Lead Natasha Soglin in the studio today as she live streamed her design process and answered viewers’ questions about game art. To give you a behind-the-scenes looks at her drawing process, Natasha re-created two game art characters from our chemical equations balancing game, Bongo Balance. Watch…

July 28, 2016 // Kat Shanahan

HTML5 and WebGL

WebGL, like HTML5, is an agreed upon standard that browser software will support. It is based on OpenGL, which is the most widely adopted graphics standard in computing. This means that instead of relying on plug-ins, modern browsers can support rich content and advanced features without installing additional software. Specifically, WebGL allows for hardware accelerated graphics…

July 13, 2016 // Stephen Calender

Pulling Back the Veil: Using Games to Let Students Explore the Impossible

Dave Ropa is an avid game-based learning supporter. In our recent eBook release, Dave shared how he uses games in the classroom to help students understand complex material and apply that learning in meaningful ways. Dave uses games for three specific content areas in his seventh grade science class – instruction of ecology & environmental sciences,…

July 11, 2016 // Filament Teacher Fellow

Game Art & Tokotas: How Wolfbears Helped My Art

In February, Brandon Pittser pointed out games can exist anywhere. Sometimes games are hard-coded into societal norms. Other times we try to gamify tasks we don’t want to do to make them more interesting, like folding laundry or washing the floor. But what happens when you gamify something you’re already passionate about? As an artist…

July 6, 2016 // Natasha Soglin

How to Design A Student Game Design Competition

Our community of educators continually tells us that students are eager to learn about game design and coding. One way to provide students with game design experience outside of the classroom is to host a game design competition. The competition doesn’t have to be large in order for students to get an in-depth look at…

June 30, 2016 // Jennifer Javornik

Let’s Play! Transforming My Teaching to Match My Students

Miranda Salguero is a Dual Language Immersion Teacher at Sandburg Elementary, a 4k-5 elementary school in Madison, Wisconsin. The article below is a chapter from our eBook How to Teach with Games, featuring stories and resources from educators who are using games in the classroom. Miranda played an instrumental role in the creation of the eBook…

June 20, 2016 // Filament Teacher Fellow

The Game Artist’s Arsenal

What is one of the most obvious, but least-talked about aspects of digital games? It’s literally staring you in the face, and yet is not necessarily required to make a functional game. If you answered “game art,” you should continue reading. Hi, I’m Natasha, and I’m the art team lead. At Filament Games we are…

June 2, 2016 // Natasha Soglin

5 Assessment Strategies in Learning Games

Every game we create at Filament Games is specifically tailored to meet pre-determined learning objectives. With this commitment to achieving learning objectives comes unique challenges in measuring the learning that occurs during gameplay. Prior to releasing games, we conduct playtests with members of our target audience and sometimes commission independent case studies that include pre…

June 1, 2016 // Stephen Calender

Building Creative Practices: Psychological Safety

This is the first piece in an ongoing series about developing skillsets that position you for success in a creative enterprise. Central to my approach is the idea that I’ll explore one concept per article. I’ve gained my perspective directing small marketing teams, wherein skinny resource margins mean that incremental growth is more achievable than…

May 25, 2016 // Brandon Pittser