As part of its Science and Entertainment Exchange, the National Academy of Sciences announced that the GameDesk Institute is the winner of the 2011 Science, Entertainment, and Education Grant. The grant will support GameDesk’s Science in Motion project, an “embodied” game for the iPad, Xbox Kinect, and SMALLab system covering middle and high school geoscience standards.

The project benefits from the support of multiple collaborators—the GameDesk Institute, LucasArts Entertainment, University of Southern California, Tectonics Observatory at Caltech, California Science Teachers of the Year, and the New York Hall of Science. “To date, there have been very few efforts to create genuine partnerships among the scientific, entertainment, and education communities,” said Ralph J. Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences. “Our review panel believes that the Science in Motion project is an excellent opportunity to bring together those communities to build a very unique and powerful educational experience.”

Press Release Article and Interview

GameDesk was featured at Variety’s Venture Capital & New Media Summit as  a “Technology All-Star”, within a consortium of key companies that have proven that strong ideas can thrive, attracting today’s digital consumers.  GameDesk, alongside other new and successful technology companies, shared their stories on the road to success.  GameDesk CEO Lucien Vattel introduced the audience to his ideas on an effective pipeline from research to product.  Variety’s New Media Summit hosted the Duke and Duchess of Wales, who sent the clear message that their first U.S. stop wasn’t about fun and celebrity but about serious business and philanthropy. The talk focused on innovations and the possibilities of technology and new media.  Lucien Vattel of GameDesk remarked, “Right now, within our current circumstances, education is the only product that any parent should be concerned about.”

TakePart and Participant Media released an article and video on the vision and work of GameDesk. Check out the entire article here.

LOS ANGELES, CA, January 14, 2011 – An innovative, game and media-based charter school is being planned to launch in the greater Los Angeles area in August 2012 by the GameDesk Institute through funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  The GameDesk School’s pedagogy will revolve around authorship practices, harnessing the appeal of games, mechanical and electrical tinkering, and film and media creation to engage underrepresented urban youth in STEM fields.

“We will create opportunities to marvel and offer meaningful learning in the form of play and creation,” explained Lucien Vattel, GameDesk Executive Director.  The school will open in the fall of 2012 with approximately 80 sixth graders, expanding to cover grades 6 through 12 in subsequent years.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the planning of the school and the development of novel curriculum design tools for the school’s rollout in the coming year.

LOS ANGELES, CA, Sept. 30 – World Cyber Games (WCG) kicked-off a four-day competitive gaming competition today at the Los Angeles Convention Center, celebrating 10 years of uniting the best computer and videogame players from around the world.

As part of the WCG 2010 Grand Final kick off, WCG donated Samsung SyncMaster computer monitors to the GameDesk Institute through the Los Angeles County Education Foundation (LACEF) to enhance STEM-based GameDesk pilot courses and after-school programs.

“Games and technology are a great way to engage at-risk kids,” said Madeline Hall, director of the Los Angeles County Education Foundation. “Having access to the best tools in our classrooms will help disadvantaged students experience the opportunities available for them in the broader world.” “This is a generous contribution. The Institute will put this technology to use right away,” stated Lucien Vattel, GameDesk’s executive director. GameDesk’s mission is to change models of learning though the engagement of games and technology authorship. The Samsung technology will be used in math and science pilot programs at various schools throughout LAUSD and in the after-school lab projects within the Institute.

SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Jul. 12 /CSRwire/ – The Motorola Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT), today announced the 2010 grant recipients of its signature Innovation Generation program, which provides more than $7.5 million to K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs across the country. Among those recipients was GameDesk, Inc. GameDesk’s Math Game Curriculum will enable students to synthesize and extract mathematical concepts through a sequence that allows the students to gain a sense of control over math as a tool for multiple uses. Students will work through their own ideas, pulling from hobbies, cultural interests, personal experiences, and scientific challenges to develop out their own projects.

Check out the entire article here.

June 17, 2010 – GameDesk was awarded, in partnership with the Dayton Region STEM Center, funding from the “Race to the Top” program to design and develop a Physical Science Game-Creation Project that will embed grades 6-8 science standards into a full game development experience. The Institute will develop this project in collaboration with the Dayton Regional STEM Center, whose hands-on project learning is characterized by problem-based learning experiences that engage students in scientific inquiry and engineering design.

GameDesk Executive Director Lucien Vattel traveled to Hong Kong and met with several notable academic and government officials including Mr. Kenneth Chen: Undersecretary of Education Bureau, Frankie Tam: Chairman, Hong Kong Game-Based Learning Association, and Professor TAM Man-Kwan.  As a result of these discussions GameDesk and HKGLA have announced GameDesk: Asia.

The effort will be to conduct a pilot study in Hong Kong to examine the effect of the GameDesk Curricular Program on local secondary students’ academic achievement. GameDesk and HKGLA will work together to determine how to make game learning processes best fit in an Eastern regional context.  The goal is to pilot GameDesk on a large scale while leveraging several e-learning initiatives in Hong Kong.  Current slated pilots include Pak Kau College (secondary school) and Precious Blood Primary School.

It seems that nothing can stop the growth of games that teach, train, and promote social change.  On Thursday, February 11, 2010, GameDesk Executive Director, Lucien Vattel joined a panel of industry insiders from Alelo, Disney Learning, and Enspire Learning, to discuss the current state of the serious games sector.  The panel discussed the use of the “zone of proximal development” as a key framework for designing curriculum, models for serious game production processes, and ensuring the survival of “fun” in serious games.  The exchange examined several topics GameDesk seeks to address in the coming months.

The most recent issue of George Lucas’s Edutopia includes a great article on GameDesk.

“Having more financial resources will enable us one day to take this program to a national audience,” says Vattel. “But my general rule is, the one thing that matters most is the individual teacher. You do need support from the administration. You do need technical tools. But if you don’t have a teacher who believes in this zany idea — that you can embed game-making technology into the curriculum no matter what the subject — then it won’t work.”

Check out the entire article here.