There is a growing technological divide between the structure of traditional classroom education and youth. Traditional classroom teaching does not know how to handle the social spaces that technology and the Web 2.0 are opening up — and that students are increasingly beginning to inhabit.Part of the problem is that education is often not compelling. The classroom is typically designed to be a placeless space; its only cultural significance is that it be flexible and generic enough to support the teaching of multiple, often-disconnected subjects taught with behaviorist or pseudo-constructivist teaching styles.

My research considers a game-based technology that enables design- and place- centered learning through locative tools. Although the specific focus of my project examines the context of a deep woods camping environment, its principles apply to education and learning in both formal and informal environments.

I propose to undertake a case study examining the activity of playing and iteratively redesigning a video game situated in the context of a four-day camping experience. Bounded in two 25-day summer camp sessions, groups of 3-5 boys, aged 11-15 will play, critique, and redesign a place-based “Mystery Trip” handheld augmented reality game, simultaneously taking on the role of game player and game designer. I ask: “How does handheld augmented reality place-based (HARP) game design embody and situate learning?”

In this case study, I examine an initial trial involving the playing and redesigning of HARP games in the informal learning environment of a four-day camping trip at a deep woods adventure camp. There are three components to my study: the game tool, the role of design, and the emphasis on place.

Game tool: Handheld Augmented Reality Place-based (HARP) games are based on Augmented Reality Games on Handhelds (ARGHs):

Augmented reality games are PDA-based simulations that use GPS-based technologies to create a virtual world layered on top of a real-world context. The games are played with a handheld device or PDA connected to a GPS device. Students carry PDA s as they walk around in the real environment. As they do so, the PDA displays items such as photos, video clips, text documents, and statistics. These items, which appear on the PDA, are triggered when players walk near pre-determined GPS positions. For example, a student playing an environmental game may trigger data related to water quality when they walk near a lake or stream. As the game progresses, players gather data using numerous primary and secondary resources. In the end, they use this information to identify various points of view, develop arguments, and present and defend their conclusions (http://academiccolab.org/argh/)

However, there is more emphasis on the cultural significance of place in HARP games, and where ARGHs can be finished, HARP games are in a constant state of development. Issues for exploration and theory: learning through games, motivation.

Design: Participants take on two roles as they play the game — that of player, and that of game designer. As players, they need to learn the rules of the game and figure out how to engage in and possibly complete the game. As game designers they critique and redesign a new iteration of the game while playing. Issues for exploration and theory: design-based pedagogies, narrative, storytelling, New Literacy Studies.

Place: Because events in the game are triggered by GPS (Global Positioning System), geographic space is a key component, and the cultural aspects of its setting can easily be emphasized in the narratives that support the game. Allowing the participants a creative role in the narratives, offers them an opportunity to exercise their literacy abilities in a way where they can feel not only a part of the game, but of the actual place they help create through their fictional and non-fictional narratives. Issues for exploration and theory: environmental education, place-based pedagogy, communities (of practice?)

The three components of game, design, and place interconnect to provide an constructionist-based learning environment with motivation, activity, and content. The game is the central activity, through which geographical place is explored — from the cultural perspectives and augmentations (content) of the game designers. As participants explore the game space, they get to further personalize and document their own interactions in it, by redesigning the narrative space of the game.

The time is right to develop tools for situated learning. Locative technologies are becoming ubiquitous — in the form of navigation systems in vehicles, handheld GPS units, or even the locative technologies in all U.S. mobile phones since 2002 that let authorities locate 911 callers to within 100 square feet. Additionally, social movements are springing up that emphasize and support local foods, local business, local neighborhoods and cultures. Web-based applications like Mapquest, Google Local and Google Earth are being developed to address our desire to learn about the spaces we live and move in.At the same time, video games are quickly emerging as a tremendous force in society with sales and popularity approaching movies. Kids are turning away from television and to video games in their leisure time. Combining technologies that so broadly and richly support the spaces we live in with the immensely popular medium of video games could is an endeavor that can and must now be taken.Educational research in games is, for the most part, presently focused on examining the learning principles in games, and considering how to shoehorn existing placeless curriculum into video games for “anytime, anywhere learning” (Microsoft). Relatively little research looks at the use of games for learning that is situated in the cultures of place, and none that I have seen investigates the potential of game design for socially-situated places. The research I am proposing pulls on research from sociocultural learning, place-based pedagogies, and design-based research, through the medium of video games.