Books by Clark Aldrich
Simulations and the Future of Learning: An Innovative (and Perhaps Revolutionary) Approach to e-Learning
“I read through the entire book in one sitting. Clark Aldrich has achieved a similar effect to Tracy Kidder's Pulitzer Prize-winning, The Soul of a New Machine. Clark compels us to the conclusion that there is truly no other way to learn than through doing. His analysis of how our children will probably learn little in traditional environments results in the realization that we are on a collision path with the current generation when we attempt to teach them with lectures and trivial interactions and exercises. Believe it or not, the book also made me laugh out loud. In addition, I learned more about Leadership than I have in 35 years of management training programs and book reading. These are serious accomplishments for what I expected to be a technical book."
- Gloria Gery, American Society of Training and Development
Learning by Doing: A Comprehensive Guide to Simulations, Computer Games, and Pedagogy in e-Learning and Other Educational Experiences
"Drawing from higher education to the corporate world, from state-of-the-art computer games and flight simulators to live role plays, this book is a great read for educators of all types," writes Marshall S. Smith, director of education programs at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The textbook Learning by Doing explains how to select, research, build, sell, deploy, and measure the right type of "learning by doing" for the right situation. As John Coné, former chief learning officer of Dell Computers, suggests, “Anyone who wants to lead or even succeed in our profession would do well to read this book.”
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Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds: Strategies for Online Instruction
This practical guide, widely adopted in undergraduate and advanced degree programs, shows current and future faculty members and instructional designers how to identify opportunities for building games, simulations, and virtual environments into the curriculum; how to successfully incorporate these interactive environments to enhance student learning; and how to measure the learning outcomes. It also discusses how to build institutional support for using and financing more complex simulations. The book includes frameworks, tips, case studies and other real examples, and resources.
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The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games: How the Most Valuable Content Will be Created in the Age Beyond Gutenberg to Google
"A must read for those involved in education and journalism," according to Bill Kovach, former Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games offers an encyclopedic overview and complete lexicon for those who care about the next generation of educational media and "gamification" of all systems. This is the award-winning essential reference for not only those directly involved in simulations and serious games, but also for researchers and writers, computer game designers, and software engineers. Organized as a style guide for interactive experiences, the book includes more than 600 easy-to-browse entries and definitions, divided into key topics with introductory essays highlighting essential concepts.
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Unschooling Rules: 55 Ways to Unlearn What We Know About Schools and Rediscover Education
"One of the few books where I have ever agreed with every word.”
- Larry Rosenstock, creator of San Diego’s High Tech High
The most powerful new ideas in education are coming from the families that have given up on schools. From his experience with homeschoolers and unschoolers, education guru Clark Aldrich distills a revolutionary manifesto of 55 core ''rules'' that reboots our vision of childhood education and the role of schools. This straightforward book, quoted by President Obama, is being devoured and shared by those who care most about education in the 21st Century, including parents, teachers, school administrators, and national policy makers.
Short Sims
"Aldrich has done it again. He has created a solution that makes the room go quiet.”
- Karl Kapp
Education is in crisis, from universities to corporations.
Despite grand visions, the fundamental building blocks of content (and therefore all of instruction) remain text heavy and passive. And the rare application of advanced consumer technology has resulted in experiments that are narrow in scope, hard to deploy, and impossible to update.
This book provides a better way: a proven new pedagogy that allows anyone to quickly create engaging and responsive content that still aligns with current budgets, schedules, and deployments.
Non-proprietary, the approach combines new tools that have just emerged with decades of research and implementations with leading organizations including The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Harvard Business School Publishing, ETS, Visa, Gartner, State Department, Acton Academy, and the U.S. Army. If education's dark ages has been defined by the dominance of linear content, Short Sims shed light on an educational landscape where active content is cheap, commonplace, and expected of authors.