Educational Software Applications

Today, our favorite chatbot Claude has gotten an upgrade. Anthropic is going all in to create a GenAI Chatbot that is for everyone from developers to teachers with their artifacts feature. Anthropic just widely released artifacts for all Claude users across their free and premium plans, as well as in their iOS and Android apps. Artifacts is a game-changer for educators, creating a dedicated window alongside the chat where Claude takes your written prompts and turns them into interactive games, presentations, websites, etc. Claude also has made it easy to publish the artifacts, so students or colleagues can interact with the activities. Mandy DePriest, on our team at AI for Education, recently demonstrated how the artifacts feature works with a quick walkthrough of a common classroom use case: creating an interactive, digital vocabulary quiz in seconds with no code and only a few simple prompts. In our training on Monday with a district in NJ, I modeled creating an interactive game out of the popular Egg Drop Challenge STEM project, adding a Batman themed twist to help students in their mission – trust me when I tell you teachers were super excited to start building their own interactive elements. If you want to try artifacts out, here are some example prompts to get you started: -Create a webpage for a high school English class based on this uploaded syllabus (we love the upload feature on Claude) -Generate an interactive math game to help 4th-grade students master comparing fractions. Use faction bars when providing students explanations for the questions -Design an interactive game to help students' learn Newton's First Law of Motion. Include an interactive element and directions for the game -Create an interactive vocabulary quiz based on keywords in the attached file We're excited about the potential of the artifacts feature to help teachers create fun and interactive ways to engage students in the classroom. Add it to the list of the many reasons to try out Claude. Have you used Claude and the artifacts feature yet? Share your best results! Links in the comments to my game and our Claude video walk through. #aiforeducation #GenAI #Claude #teachingwithAI

The Portuguese Safer Internet Centre has unveiled an innovative Minecraft world designed to teach primary school children about internet safety. This creative approach to cybersecurity education was showcased at the Lisbon Games Week 2024. Key highlights: - Interactive challenges teach crucial concepts like strong passwords and link safety. - Lesson plans and guides for teachers to implement in classrooms. - Two-month Minecraft Education licenses available for interested educators. - Official launch set for Safer Internet Day, February 11, 2025. As a professional in the tech industry, I am thrilled to see gamification being used to make cybersecurity education more engaging and accessible for young learners. This initiative could shape the next generation of digitally responsible citizens. What are your thoughts on using popular games like Minecraft to teach important digital skills? Have you seen similar initiatives in your country or organization? #Cybersecurity #Education #EdTech #GamificationInLearning #DigitalLiteracy Mirko Ross Rob van Kranenburg Nicolas Babin Pierre Pinna Sally Eaves Natalia Oropeza Zeina Zakhour Azita Esmaili Linda Grasso Mei Lin Fung David Bray, PhD Tony Moroney Jorge Cunha Neville Gaunt 💡⚡️ Tamara McCleary Claudia Mendes Silva Debra Ruh Puneet Singh Singhal Neil Milliken Beatriz G. Francisco Pinheiro 🚀 Ellen Schramke Julia Kauppert Sander Rotmensen

Curious about how gamification can revolutionise education? As a passionate advocate for innovative teaching strategies, I've seen firsthand how gamification can transform the learning experience. By integrating game elements into education, we can significantly boost student engagement and achievement. These points mentioned below highlights why gamification matters👇 Elevated Engagement: Platforms like Kahoot! are revolutionising the classroom by turning traditional quizzes into dynamic, interactive experiences. It's no surprise that these tools have driven student engagement rates to exceed 80%. Enhanced Retention: Incorporating game mechanics into the learning process has proven to significantly improve information retention—by up to 60%. Tools such as Quizlet Live are leading the way, transforming study sessions into interactive and highly effective learning experiences. Tailored Learning Experiences: Gamification platforms like Classcraft offer personalised challenges, creating a unique and impactful learning journey for each student. This level of customisation ensures that every learner is engaged and progressing at their own pace. Data-Driven Insights: The numbers speak for themselves. In 2022, the global gamification market in education was valued at $1.7 billion, with an anticipated growth rate of 27.4% CAGR from 2022 to 2027. This isn't just a trend—it's a significant shift in how we approach education. Share your insights in the comments!

Project #2 to Try This Weekend: Build a Gamified eLearning Experience 🎮 Gamification in eLearning development is always exciting! Throughout my journey, I’ve had the opportunity to design and develop complex, game-like learning experiences, projects that feel like real games while still driving meaningful learning outcomes. These builds require advanced skills, creative logic, and deep integration between Articulate Storyline and JavaScript. While many of these projects were created for clients and government education initiatives, I wanted to share the logic, structure, and techniques I use with our eLearning and instructional design community. So I’ve put together another gamified sample project complete with source files and reusable JavaScript code, for you to explore and adapt. This one includes more advanced animations, physics-style interactions, and configurable settings directly in the JS file. In this project, JavaScript powers: ⚫ Smooth animations and movement ⚫ Physics-like interactions and object collision detection ⚫ Dynamic question control based on variable states and scoring Rather than relying entirely on the Storyline JS API, I focused on clean, modular, and reusable JavaScript logic (in a 𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙧.𝙟𝙨 file), making it easy to adapt for different game scenarios. 🔗 Preview link: https://lnkd.in/d-JrBJGr 📂 Download Source File: https://lnkd.in/dDwCJqrR 💻 Download JavaScript Code: https://lnkd.in/dCH9_jKB #instructionaldesign #elearningdevelopment #elearning #articulate #instructionaldesigner #articulatestoryline #storyline360 #learning #elearningdeveloper #gamifiedlearning #elearningcommunity

I used to think games were something extra in the lesson. Now I see them as one of the most practical teaching tools in the classroom. After reading Teaching English Through Games by Simona Adriana Butuc, I was reminded that games can support real language learning when they are linked to clear objectives. Here are a few simple examples: For vocabulary • Bingo with new words Students listen and identify vocabulary quickly. • Pictionary Students draw words while classmates guess. Great for revision. For speaking • Find Someone Who... Students move around the room asking questions like: “Can you swim?” “Do you have a pet?” • Role play At the shop, at the airport, ordering food, asking for directions. For grammar • Past Tense Knockout Students say past forms of verbs. Incorrect answers sit down. • Sentence race Teams build correct sentences on the board. For listening • Simon Says Excellent for beginners and action verbs. • Describe and Draw One student describes, the other draws. Why this matters: Games often lower pressure, increase participation, and give quieter students a safer way to use English. The key is simple: Do not ask, “What game should I play today?” Ask, “What language goal do I have today?” Then choose the game that matches it. When games have purpose, they stop being entertainment and start becoming effective teaching. What is one game your students never get tired of? #ELT #ESL #EnglishTeachers #TeachingEnglish #ClassroomGames #Gamification #LanguageLearning #ESLTeachers #TeacherResources #Education

The game Laser Dance takes mixed-reality to an engaging new level by turning any suitably sized room into a laser-filled obstacle course: players dodge, crawl, and dance their way between two points while virtual lasers adapt to the room’s layout and demand body awareness and quick movement. In a school setting this offers exciting implications for physical education: it aligns perfectly with PE curricula by emphasising movement techniques, muscle and body-control, spatial positioning, agility and coordination. Moreover, it can easily be adapted into a team-building exercise where pairs of students coach one another through the moves—developing communication and leadership skills as one student guides while the other performs. Check it out at https://lnkd.in/gXi6nRHy

New Teaching Experience: Game in Class ! This semester, I introduced an interactive game in my microeconomics class called "Factory Manager: Workforce Optimization" to teach students essential concepts like Total Product (TP), Average Product (AP), and Marginal Product (MP). Students, divided into two factory teams (Small Factory vs. Large Factory), played the role of factory managers, making strategic decisions on labor hiring to maximize their production efficiency. Each round, they calculated their TP, AP, and MP to observe how hiring additional workers impacted their productivity and profits. To make the game more challenging, we introduced some rules: only five rounds were available for hiring labor, and once hired, workers couldn’t be fired. This limitation forced students to plan carefully and manage labor efficiently within the short-run constraints. The game incorporated two groups with different production functions and added more structure to the gameplay. Each group experienced different dynamics of production, leading to richer discussions about how AP and MP evolve as labor increases. It was a fun and effective way to demonstrate real-world production challenges and the Law of Diminishing Returns in action. The students had a great time, and I’m excited about how this approach turned complex concepts into an enjoyable learning experience! #EconomicsEducation #InnovativeTeaching #ProductionTheory #InteractiveLearning #ClassroomEngagement #TeachingWithGames

My first learning experience took place in a one-room schoolhouse, where my mother was the preschool teacher. The value of education was constantly hammered home at home. So I’ve always dreamed of seeing our work in data visualization play a role in teaching kids. Then along came Danish researcher Alejandra Celis Vargas, on a research mission to make Open Data more accessible and engaging in the classroom. Along with George Papageorgiou, she wanted to create a student- and teacher-friendly way to build data literacy—and she found the perfect tool in Juicebox. The result? The Open Data Newsroom (https://lnkd.in/eFi5QDBT), an interactive game that helps elementary school students develop open data competencies while solving a mystery. Here’s the storyline: > A chief editor from the ‘Data Journalists Hackers’, an international network of investigative reporters, reaches out to local journalists with a challenge: Several mysterious events have been unfolding over the past two weeks, sparking fear and confusion among citizens. The network has gathered four cases and collected open datasets—but they need the help of local journalists (the students!) to dig into the data, solve the mystery, and uncover the truth. It’s free. It’s interactive. It’s collaborative. And it’s a powerful way to introduce students to the importance of data analysis and storytelling in a way that feels real and relevant. Ms. Vargas has moved on to new research, but I’d love for this to be just the beginning: > If you’re a teacher, try the game in your classroom (https://lnkd.in/eqVcAGgN) and reach out if you want to customize it for your school or district. > If you’re a data literacy educator, consider how this gamified model might apply to your students. > If you’re my mom: “Look, Ma—I’m teaching kids about data!”

I was wrong about educational games. For years, I thought the secret was making learning "more fun." I had it backwards. In a conversation with a game developer yesterday about integrating interactive experiences into virtual learning environments, we explored everything from survival games to music apps to puzzle challenges. The breakthrough insight? Kids don't want educational games. They want games that happen to teach them something. Instead of asking "How do we make this educational?" we started asking "How do we make this irresistibly engaging?" The difference is profound. Middle schoolers can spot curriculum wrapped in game mechanics from a mile away. But give them a multiplayer music experience where they take turns playing piano while their classmates listen and chat? Now you have something magical. The sweet spot isn't making math more like a game. It's creating genuine play experiences that naturally develop skills without announcing it. Complexity isn't the answer either. Some of the most compelling ideas we explored were surprisingly simple: → A collaborative music room → Turn-based puzzles → Classic memory games with a multiplayer twist The real magic happens when students forget they're in school but remember everything they learned. Are we overthinking educational technology by trying to make everything obviously educational? Drop your thoughts below.

Earlier this month, I was privileged to be the coauthor of a new study 📄 on how games can supercharge learning in higher education and workforce training. 🎯 For years, academic studies on game-based learning have been plentiful—but most relied only on self-reporting by learners. What’s been missing? Objective, directly measured metrics of skill and knowledge gains. 📊 This study was designed to help fill that gap. We tested Acceleration, a Valens Games–designed simulation that we ran as a multi-week for-credit class at the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy. The class's learning outcomes were evaluated through a mixed-methods approach: surveys 📝, skill-based performance tasks 🧩, and focus groups 💬. Key findings: ✅ Significant gains in national security knowledge ✅ Measurable improvements in causal thinking 🔍 and perspective taking 🌍 ✅ Boosts in confidence 💪, tangible skill growth, and career clarity 🚀 Honored to co-author this report with Eleanor Ross, David Schanzer, Jessica Sperling, Victoria Lee, and Elena Johanson—and deeply grateful to both Duke University and the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) for their partnership and support. 🙏 🔗 Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/dKSDKzqh