MLTI-Kauffman Announce Games, Learning & Technology Initiative (GLTI)

Date: Participation Information Due by June 26, 2009
Location: Online!
Time: -
Registration Information


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Project Summary:
We are happy to announce a joint research project with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation on informal educational gaming. Educational games are transforming the classroom landscape: multiple research studies have shown that educational gaming can dramatically improve student learning outcomes, while simultaneously reducing the gap between the least and most accomplished students.

As part of the current project, MLTI will be supplying up to 12 middle and high schools with a range of top-tier Mac OS X educational gaming software packages at no cost to the schools. The goal of the current project is to determine which games students would play on their own, and how frequently they would play them, while simultaneously allowing teachers access to the software and associated professional development materials.


Project Details:

The games provided will cover topics in foreign languages, social studies, and biology. Participating schools will be provided with a supplementary software image that can be installed on student and teacher machines. This image will add the educational gaming software to student laptops, together with a launcher for convenient access to the software. After installation, no special maintenance or support for this software will be required.

To determine which games students play and how frequently, the launcher will keep track of game launching and quitting, and upload this information to a server periodically. We have taken great care in the design of this project to make sure that student privacy is fully preserved. Therefore, no information that could be used to identify individual students will be collected by this software. Some of the games provided include online components: students will access these online components via logins specially customized for this project that do not require them to reveal any information that could be used to personally identify them.

MLTI will provide professional development materials online to participating schools at no cost to the schools, so that teachers can explore this software and its potential fully. Teacher participation in this professional development component is optional, and not required for school participation in this phase of the project.

A second phase of the project, scheduled to begin in January 2010, will look at the use of this software in specific classroom settings. Participation in the first phase of the project does not in any way commit schools to participating in the second phase; however, participation in the second phase of the project will require that schools have participated in this first phase.



How to participate:

In order to indicate your school's interest in participating in this project, the school Principal should send the following information to Juanita Dickson by June 26, 2009.

  • Name of school:
  • Primary school contact for this project:
  • Tech lead contact for this project:
  • Why are you interested in educational games in your school? (1-2 sentences - we're not looking for a detailed statement, but rather a general picture)
  • Have you already used educational games in your school? Which ones?

For any additional questions, please contact Juanita Dickson.

For a list of software and more information, click here.