Amy Jussel, HASTAC, and MIT Press’ Open Access Books in the MacArthur Series

I was familiar with Amy Jussel’s excellent Shaping Youth blog, because she linked to a post of mine on exergaming a while back. Recently, Jussel shook some corporate trees by taking Target to task for some suggestive advertising. Target essentially brushed her off since she’s “just” a blogger, which resulted in a firestorm of criticism from the blogosphere (ouch, bad PR … and negative posts last forever in cyberspace). The New York Times took up her story, resulting in even more bad PR for Target.

Anyway, I was perusing Jussel’s blog when I discovered an entry in which she mentioned the MacArthur Foundation’s new book series with MIT Press. Her entry linked to HASTAC.org, which stands for Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory.

The MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning is available through MIT Press in paper format. However, thanks to the foundation’s funding, MIT Press is offering the texts in digital format free. Of most likely interest to readers of this blog will be, The Ecology of Games. Here is the TOC:

Foreword
Mizuko Ito, Cathy Davidson, Henry Jenkins, Carol Lee, Michael Eisenberg, Joanne Weiss
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: vii–ix.

Toward an Ecology of Gaming
Katie Salen
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 1–17.

Part I: Learning Ecologies

Learning and Games
James Paul Gee
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 21–40.

In-Game, In-Room, In-World: Reconnecting Video Game Play to the Rest of Kids’ Lives
Reed Stevens, Tom Satwicz, Laurie McCarthy
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 41–66.

E Is for Everyone: The Case for Inclusive Game Design
Amit Pitaru
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 67–86.

Part II: Hidden Agendas

Education vs. Entertainment: A Cultural History of Children’s Software
Mizuko Ito
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 89–116.

The Rhetoric of Video Games
Ian Bogost
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 117–139.

The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games
Anna Everett, S. Craig Watkins
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 141–164.

Part III: Gaming Literacies

Open-Ended Video Games: A Model for Developing Learning for the Interactive Age
Kurt Squire
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 167–198.

Why I Love Bees: A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming
Jane McGonigal
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 199–227.

Education Unleashed: Participatory Culture, Education, and Innovation in Second Life
Cory Ondrejka
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 229–251.

Why Johnny Can’t Fly: Treating Games as a Form of Youth Media Within a Youth Development Framework
Barry Joseph
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 253–266.

Glossary
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 267–273.

Games Index
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning: 275–278.

Electric Football Still Draws a Crowd

The Wall Street Journal had an intriguing article yesterday by Mark Yost on electric football. Like many of us, I had one of these as a kid. Who could resist turning on the electric playing field and watching 22 figures move around in random directions as the sheet metal vibrated? And best of all was getting to “kick” that little cotton football across the room.

Alas, my game was lost in the mists of time and parental housecleaning. I was interested to learn, though, that fans of electric football still exist. There are leagues with playoffs, and an official electric football Super Bowl. The game, originating in the 1940s, is still being made by Miggle Toys.

Fanboys spend time customizing the player figurines, much as model railroad or toy soldier aficionados. They also seek a competitive edge, altering the bases of linemen so they don’t move as much (better blocking), and of wide receivers so they “run” faster.

Such simple pursuits really gin up the nostalgia in people. I suspect Miggle Toys will see a nice boost in sales from this article, considering that WSJ is one of the nation’s top selling newspapers.

References:
Yost, M. (2008, January 30). A Super Bowl for kids who never grew up. The Wall Street Journal. p. D10.

FETC 2008: Merideth DiPietro Presentation & Tabula Digita’s Dimension M

Two of the big instructional gaming presentations at FETC 2008 came from U. Florida grad students Merideth DiPietro and Jeff Boyer. Both are studying under Richard Ferdig at UF. I was unable to attend Boyer’s presentation because it coincided with the panel discussion I served on; however, I did attend DiPietro’s. She did an excellent job, and delivered an informative session. I’m going to list the references she gave in her slides, though I haven’t had time to offer a complete citation list.

DiPietro’s presentation was titled “Using Educational Games to Develop Students’ Content Knowledge.” She started by sharing a nice roundup of the recent research on games in classroom education. Games have been found to offer self esteem boosts (Divec, Dziabenko, & Kearney, 2005). Games have been found to promote boosts in skills (Blumberg, 1998; Henderson, 2005). Finally, there is an educational benefit from gaming (Pelletier, 2005; Kadakia, 2005).

Next, DiPietro outlined good game characteristics. They have a clear purpose; contextual learning experiences; they are multi-modal (i.e., not just textual); they have a flexible/adaptive design; there is an appropriate level of challenge; and they offer positive feedback.

She cautioned the audience that there is not yet a “best practices approach” to using games in the classroom. However, practitioners should ensure games are used in an instructional context (although the instructional content may be blurred within the games), and teachers should offer upfront expectations before playing and debriefing afterwards (Garris, Ahlers, & Driskell, 2002; DeFreitas & Oliver, 2005).

Finally, she introduced offered a brief presentation of Tabula Digita’s product over at dimensionm.com. Dimension M was an impressive game, centered on Algebra skills. The quality is akin to a good off-the-shelf game students might play at home. It offers a three dimensional virtual interactive environment in which players solve tasks involving math and do battle with robots out to thwart their way. Thus, traditional game play elements are leveraged in an instructional environment.

I thought the opportunities for transference from the video game world to traditional pencil and paper tests had a good chance with this game. The segment she showed us had a brief (and exciting) introduction, where the player is dropped on an island and must find four weather stations in order to download information. The island is marked out on a grid in the upper corner of the screen. Yes, the grid is a traditional X Y graph, and the weather stations have coordinates on the grid. I was able to investigate Tabula Digita’s products further later in the conference, and hope to report more on it soon.

DiPietro summed up by pointing us toward some additional resources, and discussing the ongoing work on gaming research at U. Florida. It’s always refreshing to see a well thought out, and well delivered presentation such as this one. Judging by the audience reaction, and the number of people who stayed behind to discuss things with her, I’d say DiPietro made quite an impression.

New Educational Videogaming Book Announced

A press release for a new educational videogame book came across the transom today. Children’s Learning in a Digital World initially seems to purport to delve into notions of negative effects surrounding violent videogames. However, the copy reads more along the lines of a much more positive take on educational videogames.

Video games, computers, and the Internet can provide opportunities for problem solving, creativity, and autonomy, and in particular, carefully constructed software can offer an alternative to traditional classroom learning. “Children’s Learning in a Digital World” is one of the first books to examine the impact of computers in both formal or school learning environments and informal learning contexts. It presents exciting and challenging new ideas from international scholars on the impact of computers, the Internet, and video games on children’s learning, as well as the social and cultural issues that affect technology use.

Here is the TOC:

Foreword: Seven Criteria for Investigating Children’s Learning in a Digital World by Richard E. Mayer

Pt. I Informal Learning with Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges

Introduction by Teena Willoughby and Eileen Wood

1 Media Literacy - Who Needs It? by Henry Jenkins

2 Good Videogames, the Human Mind, and Good Learning by James Paul Gee

3 How and What Do Videogames Teach? by Edward L. Swing and Craig A. Anderson

4 Videogame Addiction: Fact or Fiction? by Mark D. Griffiths

5 Meeting the Needs of the Vulnerable Learner: The Role of the Teacher in Bridging the Gap Between Informal and Formal Learning Using Digital Technologies by Laurence Peters

Pt. II Formal Learning with Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges Introduction by Eileen Wood and Bowen Hui and Teena Willoughby

6 Using Technology to Assist Children Learning to Read and Write by Philip C. Abrami and Robert Savage and C. Anne Wade and Geoffrey Hipps and Monica Lopez

7 Tools for Learning in an Information Society by John C. Nesbit and Philip H. Winne

8 Virtual Playgrounds: Children’s Multi-User Virtual Environments for Playing and Learning with Science by Yasmin B. Kafai and Michael T. Giang

9 Can Students Re-Invent Fundamental Scientific Principles? Evaluating the Promise of New-Media Literacies by Andrea A. diSessa

10 Domain Knowledge and Learning From the Internet by Malinda Desjarlais and Teena Willoughby and Eileen Wood

11 The Integration of Computer Technology in the Classroom by Julie Mueller and Eileen Wood and Teena Willoughby Summary and Looking Ahead

Conference Announcement: Classroom-as-Organization and XB Conference

The following conference announcement comes by way of Elyssebeth Leigh over at the University of Technology, Sydney on the Serious Games listserv:

You are invited to an active and engaging conference on “Improving the Classroom-as-Organization to deliver transformative learning” Using eXperience Based learning (XB - Manual For A Learning Organization) for engaging students with the theories and practices of Organizational Behavior

VENUE: Jericho, near Burlington, VT (USA)

DATES: July 22nd to July 25th, 2008.

BACKGROUND: Several dozen of us OB, Management, Education, and Human Resources educators approach our classes as organizations to manage rather than courses to teach. Cohen et al.’s Effective Behavior in Organizations introduced this concept; Putzel’s XB - Manual For A Learning Organization focuses it on experience-based learning in a
functionally differentiated classroom organization. Other teachers have invented their own classroom organizations.

DETAILS: We invite anyone interested in knowing more about these experiential teaching/learning strategies, and in discussing how to manage a class instead of teaching it, who believes in experiential and conceptual learning, and who wants to spend a few days with enthusiastic colleagues in the hills of Vermont near Lake Champlain and Montréal.

We will build the conference around the needs and desires of participants, whoever we are, interested in the classroom-as-organization approach (not necessarily XB). Several of us will be running sessions on the classroom-as-organization at the Babson Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference. This meeting will help us set the agenda for the Vermont conference.Please see www.xbforum.net for information about XB. If you are interested in attending the conference, please contact Roger Putzel (rputzel-at-smcvt.edu).

FETC 2008: Virtual ChemLab

I’m fresh back from FETC 2008, and I’ve got lots to share. I’ll start with a presentation I attended by Brian Woodfield over at Brigham Young. Dr. Woodfield is project director for the Virtual ChemLab (VCL) computer simulation that BYU has been working on the past several years, and is offered to high schools and universities through Pearson Prentice Hall.

Several simulated laboratories are offered through the software, and Dr. Woodfield provided many interesting demonstrations during his lecture, including ones for a Physics Lab, Physical Science Lab, General and Organic Chemistry Labs. Improvements and additions to the offerings continue to occur with each passing year. Graphics art students at BYU work on the computer graphics, and each year new students attempt to outdo previous efforts. Coming soon will be a simulated Biology Lab, complete with microscopes and genetics.

Graphics indeed were good. Dr. Woodfield opened the presentation with photos of traditional chemistry labs, and explained how tedious and time consuming classroom experiments are to set up, and how they tend to stifle experimentation and creativity among students. Placing accurate simulated experiments within appropriate contexts, though, does allow free exploration and additional opportunities for serendipitous discovery. Plus, it allows much faster and less expensive experimentation. It’s also safer. Click here for a brief list of horrific accidents that have occurred in high school chemistry labs over the years. Dr. Woodfield demonstrated an “explosion” by mixing the wrong chemicals, and the beaker came back ready for another experiment. This was much safer than real world explosions.

Over the years, BYU has found VCL to be as useful as any other tool in the classroom. In other words, most of its effectiveness depends on the teacher or professor using it. Implementation is key, and instructors with a positive attitude will have the most success with the product (I think this is true of every educational product).

They’ve found most kids take 15 - 30 minutes to learn the interface. BYU instructors have also found giving students the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument before classes using VCL helps pinpoint those who prefer direct instruction over personal discovery, and who therefore may need more initial assistance with the program.

VCL seems to be most useful when assigned as homework. Dr. Woodfield indicated instructors have noted a 30% increase in performance on exams in classes using VCL versus those who do not. Also, students who did not use VCL invariably performed poorly on quizzes over the covered material.

Dr. Woodfield shared many interesting anecdotes about using the program. One involved a teacher in Indianapolis who wanted the program for her students. The school was unwilling to provide a site license, so she bought a single license and installed it on a computer in the back of her room. VCL became so popular, the students told their parents about it, and complained they did not get enough time on the program. The parents pitched in and paid for a site license so VCL could be installed on every computer in the school. Stories like that attest to the program’s popularity.

Worksheets that teachers have put together are available. Also, a couple of papers by Dr. Woodfield and his colleagues appeared in the Journal of Chemical Education concerning use and assessment of the program in college course. These are available for download at the main VCL site:

B.F. Woodfield, H.R. Catlin, G.L. Waddoups, M.S. Moore, R. Swan, R. Allen, and G. Bodily, “The Virtual ChemLab Project: A Realistic and Sophisticated Simulation of Inorganic Qualitative Analysis”, J. Chem. Ed. 81, 1672-1678 (2004).

B.F. Woodfield, M.B. Andrus, T. Andersen, J. Miller, B. Simons, R. Stanger, G.L. Waddoups, M.S. Moore, R. Swan, R. Allen, and G. Bodily, “The Virtual ChemLab Project: A Realistic and Sophisticated Simulation of Organic Synthesis and Organic Qualitative Analysis.” J. Chem. Ed. 82, 1728-1735 (2005).

Finally, there is a nice wiki on VCL for Sloan-C members that has more details. From all accounts, and by every indication, this looks like an excellent addition to high school and college chemistry courses. Highly recommended.

Metaverse U at Stanford, Feb. 16-17

ANNOUNCEMENT: Metaverse U Conference at Stanford University
    * WHERE:
<http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/map/?q=Annenberg%20auditorium&sf=a.BLDG_NAME>Annenberg
Auditorium, Stanford University
    * WHEN: Saturday the 16th and Sunday the 17th of February 2008
    * WEBSITE: <http://metaverseu.stanford.edu/>http://metaverseu.stanford.edu

<http://shl.stanford.edu/>Stanford Humanities Lab
(SHL) is thrilled to announce the Metaverse U
conference at Stanford University. This two day
conference will be held on February 16th and 17th
2008 and feature speakers from a range of
disciplines spanning industry and academia. Our
lab has worked in virtual worlds for some years
now and have seen interest in the space grow
exponentially in recent years. We believe that
the time has come for an event to tell the
interesting stories from the evolving metaverse.
The current generation of spaces is part of a
larger historical picture and many lessons have
been learned over the years. Our ultimate goal
with Metaverse U is to create a broad
conversation about the pressing question of what the metaverse should be.

Metaverse U’s list of speakers includes Raph
Koster (Metaplace), Brewster Kahle (The Internet
Archive), Jeremy Bailenson (Stanford University),
TL Taylor (The IT University of Copenhagen), Cory
Ondrejka, Tony Parisi (Media Machines & Web3D),
Jon Brouchoud (Wikitecture), Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs
(Stanford Medical Center), Rebecca Moore (Google
Earth), Parvati Dev (Innovation in Learning),
Byron Reeves (Stanford University & Seriosity),
Kari Kraus (University of Maryland), Christain
Renaud (Cisco), Mike Liebhold (Institute for the
future), Daniel Huebner (Doppelganger), Vladlen
Koltun (Stanford Virtual Worlds Group), Howard
Rheingold, Henry Lowood (Stanford University)

For more information please visit:
<http://metaverseu.stanford.edu/>http://metaverseu.stanford.edu

Registration is open at:
<http://metaverse.stanford.edu/registration/register-now>http://metaverse.stanford.edu/registration/register-now

A Run on Virtual Banks in SL

The Wall Street Journal has taken note of the run on virtual banks in Second Life. In the old days, SL allowed free reign for most anything. Folks could set up virtual casinos. Banks could be operated by anyone, and deposits could earn interest. It was play money, but the play money was bought with real money.

Then came draconian American online gambling laws and the lawyers for SL corporate parent Linden Lab said it would be best to shut down the casinos. You see, even though it was play money, users spent real money buying the play money, and American law would likely not lend a kind ear to such arguments.

The banks struggled on for a while. There were fears of money laundering. Say a bad guy opened up a bank in SL and deposited ill gotten gain in the form of Linden dollars. Then his accomplice withdrew the play money and turned it into real money in another country. So now, Linden Lab has deemed that only banks in the real world can open a bank in SL. And so, folks who deposited money in the virtual banks want their money back, and some have closed.

Robert Bloomfield, a management prof over at Cornell gets a nice quote (“There is not a whole lot that is fake about this”). So does grad student Joshua Zarwel over at NYU, who actually runs, uh, ran, a virtual bank in SL. His bank, aptly named SL Bank, offered 24-30% interest on deposits, with about $25,000 deposited.

What’s fascinating is the opportunity for studying the simulations of real world behavior that can take place in virtual worlds. Researchers can follow the effects of mass virus outbreaks on populations, economic scares, and market theory. Human behavior remains the same, whether in a virtual world or the real world.

References:
Sidel, R. (2008, January 23). Cheer up, Ben: Your economy isn’t as bad as this one. The Wall Street Journal, p. A1.

Peer Review a Gaming Text Via Blog; Read a Classic for Free

Noah Waldrip-Fruin is embarking upon a grand experiment this week by having his latest book peer-reviewed via blog. Waldrip-Fruin, over at UC San Diego, is well known in academic gaming circles for co-editing with Pat Harrigan First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game and Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media.

As first widely reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education today by Jeff Young, Waldrip-Fruin discussed peer review of his newest book with his editor at MIT Press: Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. What better place than Grand Text Auto, the far-reaching academic blog that Waldrip-Fruin runs along with Mary Flanagan, Michael Mateas, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, and Andrew Stern? And so it is the book will be made available on the blog, in modified format, entered as blog entries to be available for comment by readers. The first excerpt slash blog entry is here.

In related news, Julian Dibbell wrote a book some time back about a text-based online world that predated Second Life, World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Ultima Online, etc. etc. These text-based multi-user dungeons/domains remained popular into the 1990s. I recall messing around in them on mainframes back in the day (though I was more enamored with the graphical stuff Richard Garriott was producing, I must say). Rumor has it, there remains a small contingent of passionate devotees who sneer at graphical worlds in contempt. Hm.

My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World covers the world of LambdaMOO in the early 1990s. Without getting too technical, a MOO is sort of an advanced MUD, that allowed users opportunities to program the environment. Dibbell’s book delves into topics SL is now grappling with years later in more graphical environs.

This month marks the 9th anniversary of My Tiny Life’s publication. Dibbell recounts his noble idea of placing the work under creative commons licensing, since the publisher let it go out of print. Although the arrangement would mean no royalties for the author, the text might well have enjoyed a renaissance and gained a wider audience.

I was going to announce today that MY TINY LIFE had been liberated — not merely launched anew but born again under a Creative Commons “copyleft” license and thus set loose for any passing amateur to upload, remix, mashup, and otherwise repurpose in all the many fruitful ways that copyright, precisely, fails to permit.

Alas, quirks in copyright law have prevented that, so Dibbell has offered the text as a free download from Lulu.com.

So read an old gaming text for free, and help review a new one. All is possible through the power of the Internet.

Joystiq: Wii Fit Coming Soon to American Marketplace

 

We’ve seen educational games. We’ve seen serious games. Now, thanks to the Wii, we’re seeing physical fitness games. The latest news of Nintendo’s marketing maneuvers comes via James Ransom-Wiley over at Joystiq, who asserts the Wii Fit US is due out in a few months. The Wii Fit involves the use of a balance board connected to the Wii. It was introduced to Japanese players in December 2007. Ransom-Wiley speculates the US version may have to be beefed up to handle us Americans pouncing on it, on account of we’re so fat.