April 8, 2026
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February 22, 2013

Quincy Jones’ Playground Sessions is a Rhythm Game that Actually Teaches you Piano

Ivan Kuo54 mins

Playground Sessions will Make you a Piano Hero…and thank the gods that there won’t be any crappy plastic controllers necessary either.

Playground Sessions is a new piano education application created by Chris Vance and Quincy Jones to make learning piano more fun. The program utilizes a “play to learn” model that relies on today’s most popular music to get students interested in playing and subsequently learning as well.

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MinecraftEdu: Now Teaching in Over 1000 Schools

Kevin Shane45 mins

Educators are rapidly embracing Minecraft, an online simulation game in which gamers craft buildings and conceive of entire civilizations. These efforts proceed in an open world environment. Things have certainly progressed from educators imploring their students to stop playing Minecraft in favor of completing assignments. Now, teachers are seriously exploring ways that the Minecraft experience can advance the education of their students.

Joel Levin is a computer teacher at a private school in NYC. His foray into using Minecraft in the classroom evolved to the point that his enterprise, TeacherGaming LLC, has developed MinecraftEdu. This version of the global gaming phenomenon has been developed specifically for game based learning. As of December 2012, MinecraftEdu had already entered into the curriculum at almost 1000 schools and has even become mandatory in one Swedish school as well.

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