News of 2008

Texas Computer Education Association

(February 2008)
CRG was at the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) conference. We had a lot of folks come by and look at the Chalk House demo. We are looking forward to keeping in contact with everyone in the coming months. John Rice, who visited, just posted a nice overview of Chalk House on his blog Educational Games Research. Now that the conference is over, we are working towards getting Chalk House into production. Keep an eye on our web or our RSS Feed for news updates.

CRG Forums

(January 2008)
The CRG message board is back online and ready for use. If you have questions or problems, you can either send us e-mail directly at crg@created-realities.com or use the message board.

News of 2007

CRG End of the Year 2007 News

(December 2007)
Lots of news to end the year. Chalk House is in use testing, with two school districts scheduled to begin use in the spring of 2007. CRG will be showing Chalk House at the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) the first of February (booth 2319). The online demo of Chalk House will be available shortly after the TCEA convention. The CRG Distance Learning System (DLS) has been in stable use the past six months at two universities. While CRG is focused on Chalk House, we are continuing active development of the 3D online learning environment for future sales. We are looking forward to getting Chalk House into production and welcome schools interested in participating in our formal research efforts.

CRG RSS Feed

(November 2007)
The CRG RSS Feed is now available to those who like to follow content changes, news, and reports.

Chalk House Update

(October 2007)
Chalk House is in testing and plans are to have limited classroom testing with students later this year. CRG and DRC are looking for teachers and schools interested in particiapting in research of the learning module during 2008.

The main purposes of Chalk House is four-fold: it 1) prepare students for inquiry-related experiences by targeting improvements in organizational and learning skills such as note taking, peer review, and collaboration; 2) improve student descriptive report writing by providing expert feedback while making it part game play; 3) increase student reading recall, comprehension, and vocabulary by providing motivating reasons to read and game-related uses for what they have learned and; 4) provide students with the opportunity to enhance critical thinking, problem solving, and inference skills through game play prior to engaging in other forms of inquiry. For more information contact crg@created-realities.com

ChalkHouse Shown at NECC 2007

(June 2007)
Scott Warren and Greg Jones presented Chalk House for the first time to educators during the 2007 National Educational Computing Conference in Atlanta. There was a lot of interest in the development and we hope that many of the teachers and schools that showed interest in the development will select to participate during the design and research in the fall.

ChalkHouse Development Continues

(May 2007)
Development of Chalk House continues on schedule. Critical Mass Interactive, a design firm in Austin, has joined the project to provide art and environments for the project. CMI has been very supportive of CRG's work in the past few years. Thanks guys!

Chalk House, the first in a series of situated learning modules being developed as a collaboration between Created Realities Group and the Design+Research Collective, is an online computer-based 3D environment in which game play and engaging narrative are used to improve student literacy skills. Chalk House uses the CRG 3D online learning environment to deliver this learning module. Stay turned for more information as development continues. For more information contact crg@created-realities.com

v5 Beta Testing

(March 2007)
The v5 Distributed Learning System has been released to Beta Testing. Testers in several locations are using the environment for university course delivery. A production release is scheduled for later this year. For more information contact crg@created-realities.com