G+L+S 2007 notes from Keith
Here's some rough notes from the ( inspired by Jen's notes )
Games, Learning & Society (GLS) Conference
http://glsconference.org/2007/default.htm
Discussion and collaboration among academics, designers, and educators interested in how game technologies – commercial games and others – can enhance learning, culture, and education.
The Games, Learning, and Society group
http://gameslearningsociety.org/index.php
is a collection of academic researchers, interactive media (or game) developers, and government and industry leaders who investigate how this medium operates, how it can be used to transform how we learn, and what this means for society. As such we seek to understand what cognitive work goes into playing Zelda, World of Warcraft, or Civilization, how these design features might be leveraged to improve learning via the design of learning systems, and how organizations such as schools will need to respond.
Jim Gee
Professor of Reading at the University of Wisconsin—Madison
in his keynote at the conference he
- Made the point that by Grade 4 kids need to know how to read. Not just the mechanics but how to make meaning from what they read. The 4th Grade is the point when the texts become more technical in terms of content ( and in structure) : carriers of big ideas.
- Kids need to understand how to think about, use and construct models (of knowledge) – simulations, game developement
- Understand and practice Modding ( taking an existing system and making changes to it) as in game culture ( modifying) this is a new literacy
Gee is saying that game culture is not school. But it is learning and may be a model of a new and better type of learning.
Games have the potential to produce a “gamer mindset” and will argue that this mindset is crucial in the modern world
Henry Jenkings
Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program
His recent paper for the MaCarthur foundation
Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century
According to a recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden,2005), more than one-half of all teens have created media content ,and roughly one- third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced. In many cases, these teens are actively involved in what we are calling participatory cultures. A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created).
Two seemingly contradictory trends are shaping the current media landscape:
Convergence culture:
Participatory culture… “new media technologies have lowered production and distribution costs, expanded the range of available delivery channels, and enabled consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and re-circulate media content.
At the same time, there has been an alarming concentration of the ownership of mainstream commercial media, with a small handful of multinational media conglomerates dominating all sectors of the entertainment industry.”
Kylie Peppler and Yasmin Kafai
What Videogame Making Can Teach Us About Literacy and Learning: Alternative Pathways into Participatory Culture
Kylie Peppler was at conference to talk about "the making of games for learning (Kafai, 2006)." leading with the understanding that the Modding Culture exists and is active, but that this is not complete creative design. She described research at the Computer Clubhouse and the rise in the interest in Game Making, and rich media design through the use of Scratch and the online Scratch community.
For this paper, we want to bring back the approach of making games for learning but situate its contribution within the current debates of the participatory culture (Jenkins et al., 2006).
(Jenkins) articulated three issues that policymakers and educators face as they attempt to bridge the gap between those that contribute and those that do not:
- the participation gap - the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow
- the transparency problem -the challenges young people face in learning to see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world
- the ethics challenge - the breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants
These three issues encompass the need to ensure that every young person has access to the skills and experience needed to become a full participant, can articulate their understanding of how media shapes perception, and is knowledgeable of emerging ethical standards that shape their practices as media makers and participants in online communities
Yasmin Kafai
Associate Professor of Learning and Instruction at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies
To Cheat or Not to Cheat? Practices, Purposes, and Politics of Cheating in Digital Games
We met with Dr. Kafai to talk about our use of Scratch in the Game Design Studio project. Dr. Kafai has a rich background in reserching learning, constructionism ( she edited the book Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in a Digital World with Michel Resnick)
Dr. Kafai is a PI of the Scratch project.
Eric Zimmerman
is CEO of Gamelab http://www.gamelab.com/ A game design company. He’s currently collaborating with the GLS folks to develop Gamestar Mechanic a game design environment that focuses not on computer programming but design.
http://gameslearningsociety.org/research_gamedesigner.php
http://www.gamelab.com/about/eric_zimmerman
Eric was pretty amazing – very articulate in summarizing on the spot
For his talk he focused on systems, play, and design — as the pieces of this new literacy.Reading and writing as traditional literacy— the ability to understand, exchange, and create meaning through text, speech, and other forms of language. Media literacy, extended this thinking to diverse forms of media — from images and music to film, television, and advertising.
He broke gaming literacy into 3
- Systems as a set of interconnected parts creating a whole ( networks, bodies)
- Play – the relationship between rules and free movement within that rigid structure
- And Design, the context from which meaning comes
Eric made the pitch that there are not effort to create game design environments for learners – that in almost all development it focuses on computer programming. Working with GLS they are designine this environment: Gamestar Mechanic
(Wisconsin leads: Elisabeth Hayes, James Paul Gee, Kurt Squire, Alex Games; New York leads: Katie Salen, Eric Zimmerman, Robert Torres).
Gamestar Mechanic is a collaboration between a highly innovative game company—the Gamelab in New York—and the Games, Learning, and Society (GLS) Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (formerly the GAPPS Group).
Gamestar Mechanic is a game designed to teach young people about game design, with the emphasis on design, not programming. The goal is to help young people—gamers and nongamers—learn what it is like to think about design and to think like a designer
Eric Klopfer
We met with Eric because of his work with Starlogo, Starlogo TNG, and because of the good work he’s done with teachers through the MIT Teacher Education Program. Eric is also a Faculty Affiliate of the GLS program
Director of the MIT Teacher Education Program (http://education.mit.edu) and the Scheller Career Development Professor of Science Education and Educational Technology at MIT.
He’s currently running the Starlogo project http://education.mit.edu/starlogoand is the creator of Starlogo TNG the 3D version of Starlogo a new platform for helping kids create 3D simulations and games using a graphical programming language. His work with PDA’s includes Participatory Simulations (http://education.mit.edu/pda)
Justin Hall
In 2004, Justin enrolled as a M.F.A. candidate in the USC Film School’s Interactive Media Division. His thesis project, “Passively Multiplayer Online Games” (PMOG), is a lightweight role-playing game layered on top of web surfing. He graduates in May 2007.
Passively Multiplayer Online Prototypes
We carry mobile phones or laptop computers. We work, play and relate with these devices, leaving rich data trails. What control do we have over these trails? What feedback do they give us?
Video games give players a rich, immediate sense of presence and control in game worlds. How can we take this rich presence and player control from video games and apply it to online life?
Our Passively Multiplayer Online Game ("PMOG") follows people as they surf the web, giving them experience points, levels, items and currency. PMOG layers social gaming on top of web browsing.
Paper on PMOG
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