classroom-games

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  • Austin Independent School District makes deal to buy more video games for classrooms

    by 
    Mike Schramm
    Mike Schramm
    01.07.2010

    We've seen educational video games show up in the classroom before, and it looks like one school district is coming back for more. The Austin Independent School District has ordered up another set of edu-games from a company called Tabula Digita that provides 3D, first-person action-based games to teach students how to do basic math and algebra. One sample scenario in the games has students calculating the location of an in-game weather station on a graph, and then using the data found there to make charts and track down alien creatures. The press release doesn't mention costs, but according to its website, 15 single-user licenses to the games cost the school $1049.25 each, making up a cost of just over $24,000 for the entire 350 student program. The students, who were part of a 10-day JumpStart program and had previously failed a math retest, were allowed to play the games for 30 minutes a day, and, afterwards, 82% of the kids said they had improved their understanding of the concepts. No word on how their k/d ratio came out.