write | Beaconing

Oct 25

GWC Best Education Project 2016

BEACONING Project has been nominated as a finalist for the Award of “GWC Best Education Project 2016”. The winners of the GWC Awards 2016 that highlight the most innovative and representative projects related to Engagement and Game Based solutions will be announced during the GWC Awards Ceremony, after the GWC Conference 2016. The GWC Conference 2016 will be taken place on Spain, Madrid, 26 - 27 October. For more informations please visit GWC-CONFERENCE/

Oct 11

BEACONING Interface Meeting

On Thursday 6th October members of the consortium met at the DMLL, Coventry University to discuss and plan the design of the Interface for the BEACONING Ecosystem. It proved to be a very creative session in which visual ideas were put forward for the meta game, dashboard, lesson authoring tool and landing pages. In order to establish the best possible approach in design going forward, selected partners are to now create a set of mock ups in readiness to present at the forthcoming workshop in Nantes for WP4. These will be both from the students and teachers perspective resulting in a more traditional layout as well as more gamified dashboard approach. Once these mock ups have been reviewed and the favoured design chosen, then work can start on integrating the numerous screens, games engine, lesson plans and analytics together to form the BEACONING Ecosystem

Sep 27

The "Chatbot era" has begun

After Facebook’s announcement, during the last F8 conference, about the opening of Messenger APIs to third parties developers, the " Chatbots era" officially started. Many platforms such as Slack, Telegram and Kik or brands such as CNN, started delivering new chatbot experiences to their users inside the messaging platform where they spend the most of their time. The Shine service aims to boosts teenagers self-confidence via SMS and Facebook Bot, and someone predict that in the near future these “chatty” assistants may begin to replace some native Apps.

Sep 27

Gamification Challenges Key to Effective Learning

Gamification is a tool which every human being consciously or unconsciously applies in everyday life to influence the behaviours of other human beings. If you view every human activity through a Gamification Lens ( See Gamification Theory and Practice White Paper ), the best way to influence and engage others is to transform their role from being spectators to active participants (fans or players). Very often, in traditional classroom education, learners are treated as spectators whose role is to absorb and remember what is being delivered without any opportunity or demands on them to influence outcomes. In this scenario, learning outcomes depend on how much the learner is motivated to absorb the content and the value and relevance the learner places on that content.

Sep 19

Game Learning Analytics for Teachers

Or, what can teachers expect from Game Learning Analytics in the context of the BEACONING project? Vision - Application scenario Tania is a teacher who has agreed to participate in BEACONING pilots. She is not particularly tech-savvy, but is not afraid to learn, and already uses computers to prepare her lesson plans and do research online. She is also an avid smartphone user, with multiple day-to-day applications installed to plan vacations, drive to unknown places, or exchange instant messages. Still, Tania is reluctant to use the educational games in her class because she is afraid of losing control of what is going on, of not knowing what is happening once her students are “behind their screens”. They all seem to really “get” computers!