Mission

In the ComETS GAME DESIGN group, we will try to model what we investigate. So, we’ll be doing playful hands-on research/investigation, and application/testing of what we find.

Objectives

• host a 90-minute meeting twice a month
• deconstruct compelling games that require a lot of cognitive work (and/or busywork, or “grinding”)
• figure out what makes them compelling
• apply that magic formula to various coursework situations
• share results with peers/colleagues

Please email johnmartin@wisc.edu for more information.

“We developed this publishing system (at great cost, no doubt), and are willing to give it away for free to anyone who would like to use it to create and freely distribute cool eTexts. If you want to profit from it (industries), we’re taking 30% to cover the cost of continued development of this and other cool tools. If you’re just looking for an easy-to-use, and elegant tool for getting your knowledge out to the world for free (schools, non-profits, self-publishing authors), you’re welcome to use it for free.”

Unlike the status quo method of paying for software, Apple is not requiring an upfront payment. Consider the model behind Adobe’s DPS, to use it for a one-off publication costs $395 (plus Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, plus a suitable computer that runs the software). Then you’re allowed to profit from that one-off as much as you can with no extra fees, right? Apple flips that around and says that iBooks Author is free to use (plus cost of suitable computer that runs the software) to create dynamic iBooks content that looks and runs amazing on their iOS — but also as a pretty decent PDF creator that displays (non-dynamic content) well on any browser.

I also bet we’ll see people “trying out” (prototyping) ideas for books here — something they might not have had the where-with-all to even approach before and if they think they’ve got a hit might decide to either publish with Apple or reformat with some other system to sell for more than 70% profit.

But for not-for-profit uses, it seems okay. For example, the director of a senior center might want residents actively engaged in creating a legacy artifact for their children, but don’t have the publishing expertise to pull them through the process? This seems like a fabulous tool for seniors to pretty easily publish a cool autobiography or family lineage book. They wouldn’t (typically) want to sell it to their family, but would want it to be cool enough to engage the next generation.

• You say that you’re a non-profit community health organization that wants to get good-looking, easy-to-read health information out free to your clients, but can’t afford Adobe?
• You say that you’re a teacher who wants to create course readers or study guides for your course, but don’t want to force your students to  buy textbooks?
• You say that you’re a graduate student, passionate about your research, but suspicious of the journal system, and you’d like to get your research into the hands of as many people as possible?

If you want to profit from it, and manage to do so, then you pay.

It’s a private version of a tax system – i.e. as a citizen (user), you’re free to use services (Fire, Police, etc.) as long as you don’t profit from them. If you profit from it, there’s a 30% tax to subsidize services for those who don’t. It’s definitely a bold shift from the status quo of software. But terrible? I don’t know yet.

The GLS Conference is the premier event in the field of videogames and learning. Now in its eighth year, this grassroots “indie” event is evolving to include more innovative content formats and new programming. The GLS Conference is one of the few destinations where the people who create high- quality digital learning media can gather for serious discussion about what is happening in the field and how the field can serve the public interest. Our event is well known for its exceptionally high quality of content yet “community event” feel. Each year, we foster in-depth conversation and social networking across diverse disciplines including game studies, education research, learning sciences, industry, government, educational practice, media design, and business. Our continued commitment is to reinvent learning both in and out of formal school environments through the promise of games and simulations.

Conference highlights include: keynotes by leaders in both academics and industry; interactive workshops on game research and game design; both individual and symposia presentation sessions; big debates about critical aspects of gaming and game design; hands‐on game play in the arcade; the “hall of failure”; a massively multi-player evening poster session over cocktails & hors d’oeuvres; fireside chats that enable cozy conversations among speakers and attendees; and the GLS Games and Art Exhibition. A new session type offered this year will be the Educational Game Arcade, which will offer a space for conference attendees to play the games created by members of our community.

Confirmed speakers include:

• COLLEEN MACKLIN
• REED STEVENS
• SEBASTIAN DETERDING

We offer a variety of session formats, encouraging submissions from traditional paper presentations to innovative formats focusing on game play. All submissions are due online by January 31, 2012. Complete submission guidelines can be found on the submissions site at http://glsconference.org as well as more information about the GLS Educators Symposium and the GLS Doctoral Consortium.

Since last week, when I was surprised that the (very nice) poster I had designed and printed cost $650, I’ve been really putting a lot of thought into the weight of visual communications, and the real need to up our individual skill levels at communicating visually.

Visual Communication tools are getting accessible enough and good enough that what used to require specialized equipment and trained professionals to create, is now becoming mainstream. Just as we began to teach penmanship when pens and pencils first became mainstream, and taught typing/keyboarding when computers first became mainstream, we need to now teach design — or at least begin to transition our institutions and structures to meet them when they reach us.

A literate population needs to be able to read, write, and speak. We also should be able to design — at least adequately — on our own. We’re beginning to see this with photography and video, and these are good starts, but they actually often contain too much information. So, what tools will let me be able to do simpler video infographics like this one? (Or even static ones?) And are the tools easy enough for me to pick up?

I was reading “Promoting and assessing value creation in communities and networks: a conceptual framework” (PDF) from Wenger (the “Communities of Practice” guy) and his colleagues, and came across this section on the value, danger, and challenge of communities and networks for learning. Its application to my work is timely as we reassess our goals and priorities, and plan for another year both as a community of learners and as a sort of glue in networks on campus and beyond. It doubly applies in our consulting, outreach, and practice as a “teaching and learning arm” of DoIT — these are the latest nuggets in Sociocultural Learning Theory, and although it largely echoes much of what Dewey, Vygotsky, Wertsch, etc. have been saying forever, it does so pretty clearly here.

It’s a 60 page paper, but here’s an excerpt:

Learning and community

The formation of a community creates a social space in which participants can discover and further a learning partnership related to a common domain. This partnership can be formal or informal and its intention can be explicit or tacit. The key characteristic is the blending of individual and collective learning in the development of a shared practice.

The learning value of community derives from the ability to develop a collective intention to advance learning in a domain. This shared commitment to a domain and to the group of people who care about it is a learning resource. It tends to make information flows relevant. Over time, a joint history of learning also becomes a resource among the participants in the form of a shared practice – a shared repertoire of cases, techniques, tools, stories, concepts, and perspectives.

The danger of community is that it can become hostage to its history, its established ways of doing things, and the attendant identification with the group. When that happens, communities can become losed and inward-focused; boundaries stiff and impermeable; and past successes a blinder to new possibilities.

The challenge of community is that it requires sustained identification and engagement. Negotiating and renegotiating a reason to learn together, helping each other, following up on ideas, developing shared resources, sustaining a social space for learning – all this requires time and commitment. Note veryone has to have the same level of commitment, but there has to be enough for the community to feel alive as an entity.

Learning and network

The connections in a network can function as learning ties providing access to information flows and exchanges. This access can be intentional or serendipitous. It can be direct – involving a personal connection, or indirect – involving a series of connections. Participation in a network does not require a sustained learning partnership or a commitment to a shared domain. In this sense, learning in a network does not have to have an explicit collective dimension.

The learning value of network derives from access to a rich web of information sources offering multiple perspectives and dialogues, responses to queries, and help from others – whether this access is initiated by the learner or by others. On the one hand, because of personal connections, networking helps target access to learning resources – whether one sends an email query to a friend or decides to follow someone’s twitter feed. On the other hand, because information flows can be picked up, interpreted, and propagated in unexpected ways, they traverse networks with a high level of spontaneity and unpredictability. This potential for spontaneous connections and serendipity – and the resulting potential for collective exploration without collective intention or design – is a key aspect of the value of networks for learning.

The danger of network is noise and diffusion. Connectivity as a learning resource has its price. Expanding connectivity increases the chance of useful access, but it also increases the level of “noise.” And while networking does not require a commitment to a communal domain, it does require maintenance of connections and the ability to distinguish between significance and noise. At the collective level, the strength of networks in enabling serendipity and emergent behaviors has a flipside: the absence of collective intention and identity makes it more difficult to steward a domain systematically. When connections remain largely local important insights can remain hidden because there is no intention to recognize and negotiate their importance through the mobilization of a committed group.

The challenge of network is that it requires a strong sense of direction on the part of individuals. Learning takes place as participants leverage the availability and spread of information to pursue enterprises they care about and develop their ability to do so. The value of networks as learning resources depends on an individual to act as responsible nodes and evaluate the relevance of information flows for themselves and for the broader network.

More here (PDF).

Thanks Youtube!

Consider this excerpt:

Psychologists have determined that an “I Designed It Myself Effect” exists in mass customization, where buyers feel a sense of accomplishment from their co-design efforts. Buyers gain additional value from the certainty that features will be exactly what they want. And they can express themselves with public goods (such as clothing, cars, jewelry, or even PCs) that reflect their unique design. Ultimately, these psychological benefits translate into a higher willingness to pay into loyal, repeat-purchasing customers.

Now apply that thinking to schools, and the role of education. What would a sense of ownership and design of their own education give learners? How would classes look if students were allowed to center their learning and exploration of new topics and processes around their pre-existing knowledge, where they start out as experts in x (their interests and passions), and venture into the areas they recognize that they need to also learn?

Technology makes customization of learning entirely possible and easy — if only we agree to adjust our teaching practices to allow it.

Via: Voxy Blog

The Six Technologies are no surprise to those of us who have been advocating and developing mobile learning practices and tools. They are:

1. mobile computing
2. open content
3. electronic books
4. simple augmented reality
5. gesture-based computing
6. visual data analysis

If these look at all familiar, it may be because you are already using them via your smartphone. They are all  fiercely personal, socially connecting, and deeply embodied. The iPhone and iPad has ushered in an era of apps that take advantage of the geo-locative technologies, brilliant displays, touch screen and accelerometers of these devices to make many of the items listed already either mainstream or nearly-so — highlighted in popular “near-future” media representations.

What they do no explicitly mention, but what is implicit in the current uses of many on this list is games. Mobile games are huge, often rely on complex visual data analysis and gesture-based input.

I’ll be adding more commentary to this as I have time.

This may be the funniest and most succinct way to understand the current state of social media, featuring a high school portrait, list of clubs they’d be in, and favorite quote. (The class clown still needs to be identified).

All the sites are represented: Twitter, Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Last.fm, YouTube, Flickr, Reddit, MySpace, WikiLeaks, Yelp, Orkut, Live Journal, LinkedIn, Quora, Tumblr, FourSquare, WordPress, StumbledUpon, Dig, Formspring, and even Instagr.am.

If you ever wanted a super-fast overview of social media, here it is.