education | Liam O'Donnell

Play is the Thing for Gaming Curious Teachers

by liam | Dec 19, 2012 | education, gamebasedlearning, gaming, literacy, media, Teacher's Guide, Uncategorized, video games, virtual worlds

I regularly receive emails from teachers around the world looking for advice on how to use video games with their students. While each teacher, student and learning environment is unique, my first piece of advice is always the same: Play the game yourself. For fun....

Minecraft Madness and Play at ECOO 2012

by liam | Oct 27, 2012 | appearances, education, gamebasedlearning, gaming, literacy, media, virtual worlds

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of talking Minecraft with my two GamingEdu pals, Diana Maliszewski and Denise Colby and many, many fantastic educators at the ECOO 2012 conference. We were there presenting our talk: Playing with TNT and Other Lessons from...

Patterns holds promise for gaming educators

by liam | Oct 14, 2012 | education, gamebasedlearning, gaming, Teacher's Guide, video games

Earlier this month, Linden Lab released a very early beta-version of their new sandbox game, Patterns. Clearly inspired by Mojang, Patterns takes the block-building structure Minecraft and adds two very interesting elements: triangles and physics. I downloaded the...

Talking Power Play with Diamond Willow Award readers

by liam | Sep 30, 2012 | education, literacy, writing news

I’m incredibly honoured that my graphic novel Power Play is nominated for a 2012 Diamond Willow Award. Being one of the amazing “Tree Awards”, the winning book is chosen by the most important judges of all: the reader! Over the next few weeks,...

Judging the Skerries Soundwaves Minecraft Competition

by liam | Sep 18, 2012 | appearances, education, gamebasedlearning, gaming, media, video games, virtual worlds

One look at this blog and you’ll know I’m kind of into Minecraft. But who isn’t these days? Seriously, mention it to a group of under 15s and guaranteed you’ll start a conversation about the best mods, servers or builds. So, I was totally...