Hand To Eye Conference 2006

An interesting conference....

http://www.handtoeye.net/

Hand to Eye – What Do We Learn From Games, is an annual conference event held during the GameCity festival. This year it will be hosted by Nottingham Trent University in partnership with New College Nottingham, Djanogly City Academy and Broadway Cinema, and is supported by the Department for Education and Skills.

Interactive entertainment and videogames are ubiquitous but poorly understood. While our schools create “digital natives”, the world of work is unequipped to fully utilise their new talents. With a media profile that barely registers beyond “trivial” and is usually just “bad”, and an industry defence strategy of repeating the sentiment that videogames “have some good aspects”, the truth, as ever, is more complicated.

This two-day conference takes the first exploratory steps towards explaining the subtleties, opportunities and truths involved with playing videogames.

Hand to Eye will feature leading edge teaching practice, games industry experts and discussion of how the skills required to play commercial videogames have taken on educational and cognitive aspects worthy of note and understanding.

Speakers and subjects

• Specific examples of the implicit learning strategies in commercial videogames.
  
• Examples of commercial videogames being used and adapted in the classroom.
  
• Blue sky projections – learning in and with videogames
  
• Audience and related professions
  
• Educators interested in learning how the classroom techniques utilising videogame technology.
  
• Games industry professionals can engage directly with the core of these new markets.
  
• IT leads in RDAs, local councils and government who need to understand how the new generation of school leavers will change the face of the workforce forever.
  

In this launch year, Hand to Eye makes no claim to be providing answers, but aspires to be asking and exploring the best possible questions.