Google Maps and Video Games

-

Any time my wife and I travel internationally, we download Google Maps so that we can still get around even without cell service. It's a wonderful feature that really helps us navigate around. I love how handy these maps are and how you can even view street level or the insides of buildings. 

One extremely cool map tool that I've seen is one from a video game called Assassin's Creed. The games are histotical fiction and usually take place during key events like the American Revolution or London during the Industrial Revolution. One of the latest games takes place during the height of the Egyptian empire and allows players to explore the kingdom and it's cities. One absolutely amazing feature was a mode specifically designed for education that allowed players to your the pyramids inside and out. The concept of this is so cool in that students can play a videogame but learn and step back in history. These games usually include historical figures from those countries and allow the player to help those figures during different moments of their careers. 

The educational opportunities of these games is limitless and really does offer something that isn't seen that often. I hope more game development companies consider this going forward!

Check out the link here about the free content that was offered: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/21259446/ubisoft-assassins-creed-odyssey-origins-greece-egypt-free-discovery-tours


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are we all digital natives?

-
 No, I don't think so.  And here is why. Anytime an iPhone update happens, I ALWAYS get a call from my parents.  Or, anytime I visit my grandparents, they greet me with a quick, "Hey son how are you?  Could you fix our printer?" I was always curious as to why this is. Indeed, my parents and grandparents, who are all super smart, could figure out even what I might consider trivial tech problems, right? Not exactly.  Younger people (I feel really old for saying that) have experienced countless changes with technology over the years.  From going to dial-up internet to wifi, flip phones to iPhones, and even huge desktop computers to building our own gaming computers after watching a few YouTube videos.  We are used to technology.  And honestly, technology has grown alongside us.  As we grow older, most technologies are becoming easier to use because we get more and more used to them. Older generations, not so much.  Most of their lives were ...
Read more

The Ice Bucket Challange

-
When doing research for this week on activism seen on social media, my first thought went towards things like protesting and fighting for rights.  But, a quick Google search reminded me of a famous movement from a few years ago that is a great example of activism that was started thanks to social media. A few years ago, we all saw viral videos of celebrities, athletes, and our friends and family pouring ice water on them all in the name of fighting ALS.  The disease targets the nervous system and causes irreversible muscle failure.  There still is no cure and no real consensus on what causes it.  In 2014, the Ice Bucket Challenge was started and spread across every social media site as people would challenge their friends to pour ice water on themselves to bring awareness to ALS and help raise money for more research.  The challenge was able to raise over $115 million for ALS research.  This fun challenge united a huge amount of people and brought awareness...
Read more

Technology is getting scary good.

-
 A friend of mine told me about AI Content Generators recently and I thought it would be cool to bring up in this class.  The idea is that artificial intelligence software has gotten so good, that you can simply type in a prompt, and these generators will create articles for you based on one sentence. How wild is that?! So for this experiment, I typed in "The evolution of online education."  Below is the article created using a website AI called, frase.io .  You'll notice some interesting claims, one of which is that "online learning has been around since the early 1900s."  I don't remember reading about MOOCs from the 1930s, but maybe there were? So check it out and be sure to give it a try as well! 1. Online Education Online education has been around since the early 1900s. In fact, some of the first colleges were created that way. However, it wasn't until the late 1990's that we started seeing a huge surge in the number of students taking courses o...
Read more