After two years of feature improvements and bug fixes, StarLogo TNG is finally turning 1.5!  The easiest and coolest way to program agent-based simulations and 3D video games is now even more powerful, with the addition of several new features including:

Today at Gamasutra, they're featuring an article about an experimental game from Carnegie Mellon called Fusion that blends the genres of Puzzle, First Person Shooter, and Racing into a single, team-based game. The article, while thorough, could go into even more detail about the trade-offs and decisions made for my taste. It's an exciting experiment that seems to have met with reasonable success though, and the creators should be lauded for the work!

It's particularly inspiring for learning games because a challenge that often goes unaddressed in the educational game space is addressing students interested in different modalities. Putting aside the problematic notion of learning styles, which has recently been questioned, this represents an excellent first step in being able to address students who might simply be interested in one playstyle over another. In some ways, it echoes our work in participatory simulations, but instead of changing the players' lens on content through collaborative roleplay, you could change their lens on content through collaborative genreplay instead.

 The National Academies of Science just released the draft of their report on Learning Science: Computer Games, Simulations, and Education.  The short summary, quoting from their website is:
Computer games and simulations are worthy of future investment and investigation as a way to improve science learning, says a new report from the National Research Council. The study committee found promising evidence that simulations can advance conceptual understanding of science, as well as moderate evidence that they can motivate students for science learning. Research on the effectiveness of games designed for science learning is emerging, but remains inconclusive.
The study emerged from a conference last fall, featuring several sponsored papers and presentations by experts, and then several more meetings to try to make sense of it all (which I got to participate in).  The study provides a pretty good snapshot on where we are and where we need to go as a field in understanding the learning potential of games and simulations.

Last week I got to attend the Education Nation event hosted by NBC News.  A few years ago we worked with NBC News on a project using games, social networking and media archives as a platform for learning.  Jason and I have been writing about this experience to distill lessons for both big media and education, and that got me a press pass to the event to check it out in person.