Make An Alternate Reality Game!
View more presentations from Jane McGonigal
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Visual Organization
Creating various quest chains and weaving them into a class for GameLab is complicated. A lot like mapping out all the alternate routes in a game, I imagine! Here is my first attempt at a flowchart to keep track of my fall 11 HUM 101 class. I'm using Xmind.net, a mind mapping program.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Jane McGonigal Blew My Mind
I've been reading about games and education for a while, primarily James Paul Gee's books. Gee makes a lot of sense and his arguments were sound, but I had a hard time making the connection between the games he talks about and the process of teaching. Not learning. He convincingly shows how video games do a great job in encouraging players to learn. But how to translate that into the classroom? I didn't feel Gee ever really made that clear. Or, at least, I couldn't see how to make the connection.
Then somewhere, probably on The Colbert Report, I saw an interview of Jane McGonigal, whose book Reality is Broken sounded pretty interesting.
So I ordered it and read it last spring. And Jane McGonigal blew my mind. Her description of the way that games elicit positive emotion and response, even when they are hard or frustrating (and indeed, especially when they are so challenging that they create a sense of "blissful productivity") struck a chord with me, because I dearly love to discover new things. I recognized in her observations of video gamers the experiences I have had in researching my many odd and varied passions. And what I want my students to experience as they tackle their own research projects.
McGonigal's book led me to alternate reality games, and to the main website devoted to that genre of games, ARGNet. And it was there (I think) that I found a reference to 3DGameLab and the summer camp devoted to its beta testing. So Jane McGonigal is responsible for my participation in this quest to evaluate her ideas! And clearly, I'm a believer. I'm very much looking forward to implementing some of her ideas in my fall Popular Culture class via the GameLab interface, and seeing how that goes.
So, thanks, Jane!
Then somewhere, probably on The Colbert Report, I saw an interview of Jane McGonigal, whose book Reality is Broken sounded pretty interesting.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Jane McGonigal | ||||
| ||||
So I ordered it and read it last spring. And Jane McGonigal blew my mind. Her description of the way that games elicit positive emotion and response, even when they are hard or frustrating (and indeed, especially when they are so challenging that they create a sense of "blissful productivity") struck a chord with me, because I dearly love to discover new things. I recognized in her observations of video gamers the experiences I have had in researching my many odd and varied passions. And what I want my students to experience as they tackle their own research projects.
McGonigal's book led me to alternate reality games, and to the main website devoted to that genre of games, ARGNet. And it was there (I think) that I found a reference to 3DGameLab and the summer camp devoted to its beta testing. So Jane McGonigal is responsible for my participation in this quest to evaluate her ideas! And clearly, I'm a believer. I'm very much looking forward to implementing some of her ideas in my fall Popular Culture class via the GameLab interface, and seeing how that goes.
So, thanks, Jane!
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Narrative Games 5 Quest: This is Not a Game
Well, as the whole of this blog indicates, I'm a real fan of alternate reality games and I'm convinced that they are the future of narrative games in education.
In order to show that whatever is being taught is relevant to our students, we have to make the connection between class topics and what students experience and care about outside of the classroom. It's not that RPGs and MMORPGs can't do that. An advantage of virtual worlds is that the stakes are lowered and failure is not a catastrophe; you can always reset and try again. That's a huge benefit of "gaming" the learning process, failure becomes an opportunity to try again, rather than a judgement of a student's capabilities in the class. And ideally, the tasks and knowledge learned in-game should transfer seamlessly out to the actual world. But that just doesn't seem to happen very often. The social and problem-solving skills learned in current MMORPGs may have tangible effects on their players, but that doesn't seem to reliably translate to higher grades or better coping skills. If it did, the idea that video games can have a place in education wouldn't be so controversial.
ARGs, on the other hand, allow for a space to play without fear of failure by the imposition of a storyline on the learning task, without moving students into a virtual reality. As the saying goes, it's not role playing, it's real playing. And it is therefore easy to see how those real-life skills sharpened in a game context could then be used in other venues. The skills to research a topic online or in a library is the same, whether the task is to uncover the history of a house reputed to be haunted or to understand the role that photography played in the Civil War. And either of those topics might be a part of a game or a part of a class assignment. The line between reality and game is blurred in an ARG like no other type of play.
However, it is that ambiguity that may be the biggest point of concern in using ARGs in education. How do you maintain the TINAG philosophy without allowing your students to confuse what is invented for the game and what is factual information? If you invent a character to lead students through a historical mystery, how do you ensure that they achieve the learning objectives without assuming that the character herself is part of history? This will be a delicate balancing act, one that might demand debriefing with players after the game has ended, to clarify what was deliberately obscured in the game itself.
I am very excited by the potential of ARGs for education, especially their potential to gamify the very skills and qualities we want our students to develop: collaboration, research, evaluation, skepticism, curiosity, independence. Our future literally depends on fostering the critical and creative thinking that will be needed in the 21st century. And that is not a game.
In order to show that whatever is being taught is relevant to our students, we have to make the connection between class topics and what students experience and care about outside of the classroom. It's not that RPGs and MMORPGs can't do that. An advantage of virtual worlds is that the stakes are lowered and failure is not a catastrophe; you can always reset and try again. That's a huge benefit of "gaming" the learning process, failure becomes an opportunity to try again, rather than a judgement of a student's capabilities in the class. And ideally, the tasks and knowledge learned in-game should transfer seamlessly out to the actual world. But that just doesn't seem to happen very often. The social and problem-solving skills learned in current MMORPGs may have tangible effects on their players, but that doesn't seem to reliably translate to higher grades or better coping skills. If it did, the idea that video games can have a place in education wouldn't be so controversial.
ARGs, on the other hand, allow for a space to play without fear of failure by the imposition of a storyline on the learning task, without moving students into a virtual reality. As the saying goes, it's not role playing, it's real playing. And it is therefore easy to see how those real-life skills sharpened in a game context could then be used in other venues. The skills to research a topic online or in a library is the same, whether the task is to uncover the history of a house reputed to be haunted or to understand the role that photography played in the Civil War. And either of those topics might be a part of a game or a part of a class assignment. The line between reality and game is blurred in an ARG like no other type of play.
However, it is that ambiguity that may be the biggest point of concern in using ARGs in education. How do you maintain the TINAG philosophy without allowing your students to confuse what is invented for the game and what is factual information? If you invent a character to lead students through a historical mystery, how do you ensure that they achieve the learning objectives without assuming that the character herself is part of history? This will be a delicate balancing act, one that might demand debriefing with players after the game has ended, to clarify what was deliberately obscured in the game itself.
I am very excited by the potential of ARGs for education, especially their potential to gamify the very skills and qualities we want our students to develop: collaboration, research, evaluation, skepticism, curiosity, independence. Our future literally depends on fostering the critical and creative thinking that will be needed in the 21st century. And that is not a game.
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