The end of an era

Hi Everyone,

If you are a follower of our blog or just an occasional passer-by you may have noticed we’ve not been posting very much lately. Well there’s a good reason for that… in October 2012 PIXELearning became a victim of the recession and our offices closed for business.

Fortunately the team weren’t quite prepared to pack up and go home and agreed to join forces once more to launch a new venture. Totem Learning, or Team Totem as we like to call ourselves, opened for business on 1^st November 2012.  Our vision puts learners at the centre of a blended, joined-up, just in time and dynamic ecosystem. We’re still making serious games but we’re much more focused on using the right tools, at the right time, for the right user, ensuring our solutions meet the needs of the learners when it matters most!

If you would like to check out what we’re doing now please come along to  www.totemlearning.com and join up to our new community where we’ll be sharing and posting just like before but with a slightly wider remit including social learning, mlearning and elearning.

Hope to you see you all there!

 

 

 

Pass it on!

This month, PIXELearning will be celebrating our ten year anniversary, and we have the vision of the entrepreneurs who first set up our company to thank for eight people’s happy careers and the contribution that we, as a company and individuals can make to society.

 As a team we’re always keen to do what we can to spread the love!  So we’ve decided to

Gamification, Simulations and Serious Games: They are different

We have recently come across this blog piece by Linda King, Head of Communications at G2G3, focusing on the differences of gamification, simulations and Serious Games.

Now as I’m sure you are aware, our blog views haven’t been the kindest to the term Gamification, and Linda shares some of our concerns particularly around differentiating between the three. However we both understand it is a hot topic and we need to help share the understanding of what Gamification isn’t and how best to use it.

In this post, Linda indicates the main differences between the terms which provides great clarity  of what each one really is. An extract of what Gamification, Simulations and Serious Games are can be found below. To view the full blog post, by Linda, please click here:

Gamification:

Leverages ‘game mechanics’ such as points, levels and badges to non-game activities

Simulations

Place people in a risk free environment which supports their engagement in an authentic experience which contextually demonstrates benefits and consequences.

Serious games

Use traditional gamecraft techniques around serious concepts such as business, education, environmental or social issues.

The full definitions provide great clarity and ones that really help provide insight into how and when to use gamification, simulations or serious games

Vive la Revolution! Quitting Sitting is on a role!

Vive la Revolution!

Vicky has joined the Sitting Quitting campaign and made herself a standing desk too!

Bar stools seem to be next on the agenda as the old legs aren’t used to this much standing, it would be nice to take the weight off every now and again.

More updates to come soon!

Quitting Sitting

Today I have taken what I hope to be a critical step to a more healthy work environment; I am quitting sitting! For years I have suffered with a bad back and after my last ‘episode’ I couldn’t sit at all, I had to stand and I must say it really helped! But old habits die hard and after the agony had subsided I returned to my evil temptress of a chair, with all its ergonomic settings! Curse those false idols! But after reading Kirk Hamilton’s account of playing games standing up this reminded me of how great it was to stand! After you overcome all the funny looks you get from your colleagues that is 😉

Anyway this post isn’t anything to do with serious games but it may well be a shift into a healthier office as Vicky Rose may well be joining the standing revolution any day now! We all have to work and more and more research is being published about how sitting is killing us. We’re not designed to be in that position all day, so my trusty xbox 360 box, an acer laptop box, and a box full of cables have become my new standing desk! Hey I said the post wasn’t about serious games, but I had to get some technology in somehow!

I’ll try to post a few updates and perhaps some pics of our Heath Robinson inspired contraptions soon and if you have a home made standing desk why not post your pics too!

Join the standing revolution and quit sitting!

 

A little interview with Human Value International

Came across this little interview I did a while back for Human Value International and thought I’d share it with our readers! It covers some of the key questions about serious games such as the what, why and hows of the industry.

1. Would you present yourself in shortly to our audience (profile, organisation)?
PIXELearning is a world-leading provider of immersive learning simulations and ‘Serious Games’ for organisational learning and development, business education and marketing communications. PIXELearning combines technology, the creative arts and, most importantly, an understanding of how people really learn in 21st century society.

The company was established in 2002 specifically to provide eLearning experiences which are designed, from the ground up, using game-based approaches and technologies.
The company’s ethos is that technology is best used in a learning context when it allows people to communicate, collaborate, share ideas and knowledge and, apply information and theory in a safe but realistic simulation of real life situations.

PIXELearning have worked on a vast array of projects with a varied user base such as

What the Gamification of Feedback Means to Learning Design – PDOA (Public Displays of Achievement)

Gamification has spread from marketing to learning and development, and at PIXELearning we’re often asked to design leader boards, badges and public rewards into the feedback mechanism of our Serious Games.

I felt it might be a good time to take a moment to check out the pros and cons of gamifying feedback.

 

So, before I go any further

New Online, International Directory for Serious Games Industry Offers

LOS ANGELES – March 27, 2012 – The Serious Games Association today announced a new, international resource for developers, providers, analysts, educators and consultants, the Serious Games Directory.  All listings and access will be available free in 2012.

The Serious Games Directory will cover commercially available

o   Games and sims
o   Developers interested in contract work
o   Technology and tools

2000 students from 60 schools compete in Mosaic Enterprise Challenge

The Enterprise Challenge, run by Mosaic Network has just completed its fourth competition after seeing an increasing number of students take part from over 60 schools nationally.

A record number of 2,000 students entered this year’s competition to compete for a place in the final. To be in the final, students needed to have achieved the highest possible scores playing PIXELearning’s The Business Game, combined with an ethical business strategy.

Finals took place at Hogan Lovells where the top five teams were invited to come along and pitch their business idea to a room full of people including Mary Nightingale

Urgent Notification: The PIXELearning blog has been hacked! – Please ignore any posts from Mr. G

Dear friends and followers. It appears that somebody going by the name of ‘Mr. G’ has hacked our blog and written a post contesting the effectiveness of Serious Games. We at PIXELearning would like to make it clear that we do not share these views, quite the opposite. We will continue to make it our life’s work to prove Mr. G wrong and endeavour to make games that intrigue, engage and encourage mastery of new skills and knowledge.

Stay tuned to our blog for more updates on some of the creative instructional design solutions we’ve had the opportunity to evolve, and the lasting partnerships that we’ve made because our games really work.