Our June meeting on Educational Gaming featured Matt Demaray, Vice President of Digital Media and Content for Interactive Design at at Media Options, Daren Carstens, President of Carstens Studios, Inc. and Harry Gotlieb, Founder of Jellyvision.

Media Options had developed several games for educational purposes including "Building Homes of Our Own",a unique CD-ROM teaching tool simulating the home building process, from selecting a lot to selling the home to a qualified buyer. Building Homes was designed from scratch to create an educational experience that delivers the quality kids expect in a game environment. The program has been awarded a 2002 International EMMA, and is now in its second printing due to overwhelming teacher demand.

Carstens Studios Inc. developed "Math Arena", a PC/Macintosh-compatible CD-ROM loaded with interactive math challenges. "Math Arena" has won numerous awards including 2000 CODIE Award finalist, 2000 Milia d'Or Award finalist, 1999 MIMC Award, Best Educational Multimedia Titile, 1999 Award in Parent's Guide to Children's Media Inc. and Top 100 All Star Software for Schools in Children's Software Review.

Jellyvision is best known for creating award winning, best-selling interactive games such as YOU DON'T KNOW JACK and "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.". The YOU DON'T KNOW JACK franchise includes "10 CD-ROMS, two PlayStation titles, a tabletop version, two books, numerous foreign language versions, and even spawned a TV show that aired on ABC in 2001". YOU DON'T KNOW JACK sold over 3.5 million units, was distributed in five countries and won over 50 major industry awards. Currently Jellyvision is pushing the limitations of technology even further with their Interactive Conversation Interface (iCi), a tool seeking "to give every digital device the ability to communicate information and ideas with such seamless pacing and awareness, such personality and wit, that it feels like a real person is just behind the machine".