What are serious games?
Serious Games leverage the power of computer games design techniques and mechanics to captivate and engage end-users for purposes beyond pure entertainment. While ensuring learners are challenged and motivated, the main purpose of a Serious Game is to develop new knowledge, skills and to ultimately produce a behaviour change. Serious Games enable learners to undertake tasks and experience situations which would otherwise be impossible and/or undesirable to practice in the real world for reasons of cost, time, logistics and safety.
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What poles are you learners climbing?
We were interested to hear about OpenReach’s use of immersive simulations to safely train new engineers in the skills they will need to help the firm in its plans to provide 12m homes with super fast broadband by 2020.
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A tribute to Richard smith
Enigmatic, supportive, cheeky, fun, risky, clever, inquisitive, dedicated and loyal, these are just some of the words that come to mind when I think about Richard.
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How can you learn project management skills online?
Have you ever come across someone who you thought of as a natural project manager? They just seem to have the knack for it! The kind of person who sees Gantt charts in their sleep. I’m sure you know the kind of person I’m talking about: A natural.
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Totem try to 'escape the room' ...
This year for our Christmas party we decided to do more than just a lunch and a few drinks and put our game solving skills to the test. Let’s face it, we know we can make great games, but can we win them? Especially when they are time limited, under some serious pressure and we are locked in rooms…. which we have to escape. That’s right!! We decided to try our hand at a couple of room escape games.
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Liberating the Learning Process through the 'Sandbox' game design
Too much of learning is top down, trainer led, sage on the stage – these are the traditional models of imparting knowledge into a mass audience. Originally designed for educating workers during the industrial revolution the classroom seems to be a concept we are holding onto for dear life. But why does formal learning have to be this way?
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How can serious games help leadership development?
Leadership, like many other soft topics which are classed as critical 21st Century skills is a tough cookie to crack. There is only so much theory one can learn about a soft skill before you need to bite the bullet and head out to the real world to practice your new found knowledge. But therein lies a challenge; to practice leadership skills you need people to lead and said people may not be immediately available. And to top it off, if you turn out to be a poor leader, you risk widespread damage amongst the team.
So how can we address leadership development using games? How can a game produce a better leader?
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The benefits of serious games
THE BENEFITS OF SERIOUS GAMES
This is probably the most common argument you might hear if you are looking into Serious Games. Everyone in the industry screams this out of the top of their lungs, but that’s because it’s true. You may think Serious Games will only appeal to the young, to the gamers, but actually cleverly designed solutions should appeal to people of all ages and backgrounds regardless of whether they have played games before or not.
And here’s why! ...
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How Totem are helping entrepreneurship in Uganda
HOW TOTEM ARE HELPING ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN UGANDA
....we are proud to announce an exciting collaboration with The Butterfly Project in Uganda where we have donated The Business Game so young entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to learn through play.
The Butterfly Project is a unique project in Uganda, which trains up young people from the most remote rural villages and disadvantaged urban slum districts to become social entrepreneurs. The project was instigated by Social Enterprise Africa CIC but is run through Chrysalis Limited in Uganda.
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