[Ltg] HAIL Seminar (31st July): Dr Nicolas Szilas, University of Geneva, Switzerland

[Andrew Lampert]

                      H.A.I.L. Seminar series
                          CSIRO ICT Centre
                   http://www.ict.csiro.au/HAIL/


Title:          Games and learning: Towards a more formal approach

Speaker:        Dr Nicolas Szilas
                TECFA Lab - FPSE
                University of Geneva, Switzerland

Date:           Tuesday 31st July 2007 at 11am

Location:       CSIRO ICT Centre,
                Building E6B, Macquarie University.

                See <http://www.ict.csiro.au/HAIL/location.htm> for details.

Video:          We usually stream live video of seminars.

                At the seminar time (see above), point your browser at:
                  <http://webcast.nsw.csiro.au/httpfs/ICT/HailSeminar/live.asx>


Abstract

Using games for learning has become the new trend in Educational Technologies.  Because games are fun and promote user's activity, games would be the perfect candidate to replace the good old fashioned pedagogy of our old universities.

However, when looking in more detail, few scientific experimentations demonstrate the effective benefit of games for learning. Besides, some uses of games in real educational settings tend to prove that the reality of .games for learning. is much less encouraging than papers or books on the field claimed.

Given that context and with the general goal to encourage the design of games dedicated to learning in various fields of knowledge, we have felt the need to improve the theoretical grounding to the idea that games could be used as educational tools.

In this talk, I will provide a theoretical account of what a game is and to which extent it is related to learning. Several types of articulations between learning and playing will be deduced, which are useful both for analysing existing educational games and designing new games.


Short resume

Nicolas Szilas has been working in the field of Cognitive Science for fifteen years. From research to industry, and from industry to research, he has been aiming at being at the heart of innovation, in the various domains he works in.

After the completion of his Ph.D in 1995, and two postdoctoral positions in Montreal, he entered a video game studio in 1997, in order to manage the newly created R&D program on AI for video games. Between 1999 and 2001, he was Chief Scientist at the Innovation Department of Unilog, a European software integration company. He developed new ideas and business in the field of search engines, web personalisation, linguistics based applications and ergonomics.

In parallel, he conducted his own research program on Interactive Drama called IDtension. Since 2003, he has been working on his project in French, Australian and Swiss Universities. He is now associate professor at TECFA, University of Geneva, working at the intersection of games, narrative, learning and technology.


----------------------------------------
The HAIL Seminars' URL:
http://www.ict.csiro.au/HAIL/

Contacts:       Andrew Lampert
Address:        CSIRO HAIL Seminars,
                c/o Andrew Lampert,
                Locked Bag 17,
                North Ryde NSW 1670

Phone:  (02) 9325 3100
Email:  Andrew.Lampert at csiro.au


*Administration*
-----------------------------------------------------------------
* To leave the list, send the message "unsubscribe HailSeminars" to
the list server address <majordomo at nsw.cmis.csiro.au>.
The subject line of your e-mail message will be ignored.
==================================================================