Design Challenge #1: Playful Literacy

Challenge

How do you make learning a language/literacy skill playful?

Problem

Topic

Teaching designers fundamental multimedia programming skills

Audience

Professional designers and design students, as well as educators and psychologists who are creating applications and interfaces.

Setting

Higher-education institutions/design schools, professional associations, workplaces/on-the-job training.

Problem

How do we create an approachable learning context for groups of designers with varying experience levels in computer programming so that students will achieve a sufficient enough level of self-efficacy that they will feel able to pursue code-related projects in their own multimedia/interactive work?

Resources

1. Hill, T., Smith, N. D., & Mann, M. F. (1986). Role of Efficacy Expectations in Predicting the Decision to Use Advanced Technologies: The Case of Computers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72, 307-313.
2. Czajs, S., Charness, N., Fisk, A. D., Hertzog, C., Nair, S. N., Rogers, W. A., & Sharit, J. (2006). Factors Predicting the Use of Technology: Findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE). Psychology and Aging, 21, 333-352.
3. Udama, L., Morrison, G. R. (2007). How do instructional designers use automated instructional design tool? Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 536-553.
4. Downey, A., Elkner, J. & Meyers, C. (n.d.). How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Python Version. Retrieved February 11, 2007 from http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. June 18, 2002. Introduction to Logo Blocks.Retrieved February 26, 2007 from http://llk.media.mit.edu/projects/cricket...
6. The Gunakara Sun Systems. (n.d.). Prograph 1.1. Retrieved February 26, 2007 from http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/....

Concept

What are people going to learn? And why? What form will it take?

I intend to teach the fundamentals of multimedia programming to interface designers who have not had much exposure to programming. I will use a graphical programming language that guides players to build simple programs from a limited set of programming blocks. By doing this, players will gain an increased proficiency with programming skills and an increased sense of self-efficacy when approaching problems that require coding. It is hoped that this will enable the users to feel that they can pursue more difficult tasks on their own.

The game I will build is called Alien Pet Shop. The player is the chief mechanic of a funky store that sells unusual, customized pets to discerning customers. The mechanic's job is to build and expand the store's ordering system to allow for different kinds of requests. In the process of working on the store's machine, players will be introduced to important programming concepts suchs as variables, control structures, and functions.

Using the store as a metaphor for an interactive process, users will read the kind of inputs given to them by users. At first, the input will be very simple. Customers will ask for a specific type of pet, such as the "rudbud." The player will then set up a "plan" that will allow for a "type" request to come into the system.

After the request is in the system, the real work begins. The player will add a new "action" to the plan. The action will take the input and perform work to try and get the proper outcome.

The player can edit their actions to work with the kinds of requests that come through. For example, if the customer has asked for a "rudbud," then their action will simply be a condition that asks if the type equals "rudbud" and then returns that pet to the output.

As the player completes the simple challenges, different kinds of orders will start to come in. A customer might ask for a "red" pet. The player will then work with that input and return a set of new choices to the customer, based on which pets are red.

A further advancement will be customizable pets. A customer might ask for a "rudbud" with 5 legs instead of 3, which would require the player to set up a loop that can add legs to the pet based on the type and quantity requested.

By setting up increasingly challenging processes to manage the store, the player, as mechanic, will have to write more and more accommodating "code" to make the system work.

As they progress in complexity, they will see their work on the graphical code editor represented as an actual programming language in the code window. By showing the player multiple syntaxs, they will get used to the idea that the work they are doing in the graphical editor relates directly to the code produced in the code window.

A further advancement would encourage the player to start using the code window for complex scripts, and submitting the to the "machine." This would give the user their first taste of writing code, but would still keep the training wheels of the graphical system handy if they get stuck.

Idea Sketches

Take a look at the gallery.

Purpose

The purpose of this game is for professional interface designers to gain an increased proficiency with programming skills and an increased sense of self-efficacy when approaching problems that require coding. From this starting point, it is hoped that students will feel they can advance farther in programming than they otherwise thought they could have.

Structure

The Main Flow of the Game The main movement in the game begins with a new challenge posed by the fictional clients. In the first few runs, the player is assisted by the Master Mechanic. The MM guides the player through the process of selecting inputs from the order, setting up the plan, and, most crucially, "writing" the code. The MM prompts the player through the early challenges and points the player toward the right tools from a limited set that represent actual coding concepts.

Once the plan is complete and the code has been written, the plan is run. The player can see how the code operates with the input as each step is highlighted as it gets executed (see below.) Then a new challenge is initiated. Eventually, the MM takes a long and well-deserved vacation and the player is left to handle the challenge based on what they've learned.

Model

The Master Mechanic The model for this game is a highly-colorful alien pet shop. The palette for both the game pieces and the rest of the art is a saturated and contrasting, emphasizing fun and the odd funkiness of this futuristic enterprise. The game pieces themselves are large and block-like, and designed to suggest a pairing or an action without much additional prompting.

Taking a look at the attached PDF file (see bottom of this page,) the building of the code becomes apparent. The initial levels are guided by the Master Mechanic and prompts on the menu items, put the pieces themselves fit together consistently through the play of the game. In addition to explicit hints from the MM and implicit hints on the shapes, other elements appear the help guide likely pieces together, so that a user who drags an item around long enough will receive clues as the matching pieces near each other.

By using the simple set of cues, the player begins to see a fully formed program taking shape. This program is represented graphically in the main window, and takes more concrete shape in a side window in actual code that the player can grab, save, and manipulate more expertly as they progress in the game.

Evaluation

In the future, I want to focus on increasing the visual representation of what is happening, particularly in line with the machine/factory metaphor. By showing what actually happens as the pet is selected or constructed, it could reinforce important points along the "plan's" execution path. Increasing this tie to the central metaphor can help visual learners tie down the concepts to their own already sophisticated visual understanding.

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model.pdf	1010.04 KB

Design Challenge #2: Modifying a Game

Challenge

Can you adapt an existing game to make it a focused teaching experience?

Problem

Topic

Teaching children about the habitats, behaviors and characteristics of animals.

Audience

Reading-age elementary school children.

Setting

Elementary school classrooms, particularly during free periods or group work.

Problem

How can a card game in the style of Apples to Apples be used to help children identify the different attributes associated with a variety of animals?

Resources

1. Apples to Apples. Card game.

Concept

Children will learn about how animals forms and behaviors adapt them to their environments. Using Apples to Apples as a game, a rotating "judge" player will draw an animal card (just as the judge in A2A draws an adjective card). Other players will have, in their hands, traits of animals like color, climate preferences, mode of transport, diet, etc. Players will submit a trait that they think best matches the animal on the table. The judge will pick the traits he or she best thinks matches (maybe more than one, as opposed to one and only one in A2A). The animal and the traits are written down, possibly on a computer, for later discussion and comparison. As the rounds continue, players are encouraged, either on the worksheet on which the rounds are recorded or on the computer screen, to see which traits animals share in common, and start making inferences about similar creatures.

In addition to the inferences made about animals, each of the animal cards could be marked with brief descriptions that point to likely traits. Similarly, the trait cards could point toward animals that are more likely to possess them. This way, players wouldn't need to depend as much on prior knowledge and would be able to construct new knowledge within the confines of the game itself.

See attached desed2sketches.pdf for idea sketches.

Porpoise

The purpose of this game is to teach elementary school children about animals. Specifically, they will learn about how the animals are adapted to their environments by exploring these animals habitats, traits, and behaviors and finding commonalities with similar creatures.

Structure

StructureThe game follows the same progression as Apples to Apples, except that the dealer can pick multiple winners per round and the progress of the game is tracked on a worksheet.

Each player starts out with 5 trait cards. The stack of animal cards is picked up by the dealer and the top card is laid face up on the table.

Each player submits a trait they think is most appropriate. The dealer selects as many cards as he or she thinks matches the animal and writes them down on the worksheet.

A variation I want to test is switching trait and animal cards, so that players hold animals and traits appear in the dealer's deck. I also want to game how many cards a dealer can pick (unlimited, limited to 2 or 3, only one) and see how this affects the game flow.

Model

The model for this project is similar in many ways to that of Apples to Apples. For testing purposes, an equal amount of trait and animal cards were prodeuced, making switching the focus of the game (from animal to trait) as simple as switching decks.

Two versions of the worksheet were also produced, each version reflecting a different possible focus on animals or traits.

Attachment	Size
desed2sketches.pdf	458.1 KB
desed2structure.pdf	180.35 KB

Design Challenge #3: Evaluate the Modified Game

For my game, I originally modified Apples to Apples to work with animals and their behaviors and habitats. The very first play test of this occurred in class, with four of my classmates playing. As much fun as the original game was, though, play was slow and the learning features were a little clunky--recording the animals and their traits clogged up the game play.

The game I came up with after that, based on suggestions from that class, was more like dominoes, specifically the "Mexican Train" variation. The twist I put on it was faithful to my original educational goal of teaching kids about the lives and homes of animals. Each domino had a name and picture of an animal, and a set of four icons that depicted that animal's identity. The icons represented:

• Cold or Warm Climate
• Meat or Plant Eating
• Diurnal or Nocturnal
• Land or Water

The Animal Dominoes

Players were asked to match three of the four traits on tiles on the table to a tile in their hands.

The next play test of the game happened in class with Becky, Laura, Albert, and I playing. I held the lead for a brief period, but Becky won in the end. There was a good consensus that the game was fun and playable--despite several players never having played any version of dominoes before, the rules were easy to explain and everyone picked it up very quickly.

I asked the following questions:

1. Name some herbivores that are active during the day.
2. Name animals active at night that live on land.
3. Name cold weather animals that live in the water.

I did get a couple of correct responses from the group of players, but not everyone answered correctly or at all. This exposed one flaw in the game play--the animal identification can be missed if not emphasized properly in the play.

The next test I ran at home with just my wife, Kelcey, and me. I was interested in seeing if the game was still playable with only two people, which turned out to be just fine. I also emphasized, before play, that she should pay attention to the animals on the cards, and I made a point of mentioning the animals as I played.

In the end, Kelcey got two of the three questions after a little prompting, but there did still seem to be a weakness in that area. Some of the suggestions that came out of that play test were:

• Place the animal pictures in the center of the dominoes, with the icons on both ends. This will feel more like the original game and speed the uptake.
• Find a new rule that emphasizes the animal on each card. For example, require players to make a noise like the animal, make a face like that animal, otherwise imitate the animals, give the animal a name like "Paul the Polar Bear"

Kelcey Playing Animal Dominoes

On the positive side, the game got raves for working with categorization tasks and simple playability. Such are the benefits of living with an educational psychologist.

When considering the game as it stands now, the following principles of James Gee come to mind:

Co-Design

Players are creating the category challenges for themselves and other players, and subtly grouping their hands into real-world animal categories as part of the strategy

Well-Ordered Problem

One of the nice parts of the play in dominoes is that early rounds are very easy to get playing, and the challenges increase as players start holding fewer and fewer dominoes. In this game, that means play happens very quickly up front, but requires closer thought about which animals are more like the played animals as the game reaches its climax.

Pleasantly Frustrating

This is another feature inherent in dominoes that aids the new game. Players frequently experience reversals of fortune as different plays are made. This leads them to have to constantly re-examine their existing animals and those relationships, while keeping the game fresh and interesting.

Information "On-Demand" or "Just In Time"

The domino game piece have everything that a player needs to make the next play right on them. The game in play also has the benefit of making relationships between animals readily apparent by looking at the board. On a number of occasions, I found the play I needed by looking at past plays on the table.

Skills as Strategies

The skill taught by this game is categorizing animals. Using these categories is crucial for winning the game. Finding the cold-weather meat-eating daytime land animal and matching it with the warm-weather meat-eating daytime land animal is both the skill taught and the mechanism behind the game itself.

System Thinking

While the game does not even nearly approach the complexities of our taxonomic system of animal classification, it does require the player to see the board, as a whole, and few it as a series of connections and divergences between like and unalike animals. Within the narrow confines of the game is a system for dividing the natural world, a system that can easily be assessed, during play, by looking at the table and the dominoes in hand.

I would argue that the Well-Ordered Play and Pleasantly Frustrating qualities are at the fore, mostly because of the greatness of the original game. Next, On-Demand Information is at work here rather nicely, with the dominoes holding compact and easily-readable data for players to use. This quality in turn benefits the Skills as Strategies characteristic by enabling players to easily convert their data into action. Finally come Co-Design and System Thinking, which work in tandem as players experiment with different pairings and branchings during the course of the game.

I think this game has a good amount of potential for playful learning. It may take a few rounds to pick up the lessons, and more could be done to clarify the game pieces and emphasize the animals. On the whole, though, it's a fun variation of a successful game.

Design Challenge #4: Math Cookbook

Challenge

Design a lecture or instructional piece for something missing from the MFADT curriculum.

Problem

Topic

Teaching graduate design students the kinds of math they need to do interesting graphics, games, and other computational designs.

Audience

Parsons MFADT students.

Setting

In class or in lab project work.

Problem

What is the best and most useful way to provide Parsons MFADT students with the kinds of math that they need with out getting bogged down in details that do not relate to their needs or work?

Resources

1. Python Cookbook. ActiveState Programmer Network. Retrieved 23 April 2007 <http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Python/Cookbook/>.
2. "Trigonometry Tutorials and Problems." Mathematics Tutorials and Problems (with applets). 30 Apr. 2007 <http://www.analyzemath.com/Trigonometry.html>.
3. "XP Math - Math Topics That Designers Require." XP Math. 30 Apr. 2007 <http://xpmath.com/careers/jobsresult.php?groupID=2&jobID=61>.

Idea Sketches

• recipes
• velocity
• simple equations
• rates
• acceleration
• equations with exponents
• rates of rates
• gravity
• constants
• "wiggling"
• sine and cosine
• parametric equations
• bouncing
• parametric equations
• vector math
• resultant vectors

---

• interaction
• controllable applets
• can modify parameters
• observe

Idea Sketch - Sine Wave: A mock up of an applet that would let designers explore the possibilities of a sine wave graphically.

Concept

My concept is to create an interactive "cookbook" that will allow Parsons MFADT students to explore, test, and create their own interactive or computational pieces using simple but powerful math fragments. The idea is threefold:

1. Organize sets of simple mathematical equations into visual domains as a kind of taxonomy. Equating the equations with visual representations, allow the user to search for the kind of effect they want (rather than by the mathematical taxa). This will create a cookbook style of math excerpts. Concepts like sine waves could be grouped into animal motion (wiggling) for example.
2. In each recipe, show an applet or other interactive model with sliders or other simple inputs that allow the user to manipulate a graphical representation of the equation, etc. while also seeing, in real time, the changes to the equation. This multiple encoding will help emphasize the relationship between the graphical and mathematical.
3. Once the user is satisfied with their settings, allow her or him to save the settings with a comment. This will allow the user to:
   • Save their work
   • See other people's settings and explore what they have done

Purpose

The purpose of the cookbook is to teach DT students about mathematical formulas that can help them achieve desired effects in their interactive and computational work. It should be a persistent and expanding resource for students to use as a reference and repository of collective associations between different math concepts.

Structure

The overall structure of the product is very similar to other community content sites, like the Python Cookbook or instructables. That is, there are individual pages that host particular pieces of information, say about the sine wave function or elasticity functions, that are linked together to form a whole corpus and are supplemented with user responses and other data.

More specifically, each page contains an interface that displays the function as line, in most cases, and shows an example, where applicable, of what that function would look like it it were placed in motion.

The page will also contain keywords that link to this page (as well as others), a list of similar pages (derived implicitly by automated analysis of the keyword linkages), a set of saved settings for the student and other users, so people could go back and explore their experiments, and a threaded list of comments, where users can post more about their experiences.

The pages would be linked together via a search page that allows users to search by keyword. The result of this search would be a graphical result page that would visually show the user what the relevant results looked like. The user could than navigate into the individual pages themselves and begin exploring.

Formutator Search Page

Model

Simple pause, play, rewind and fast-forward buttons would aid study of the function as motion.

Formutator Sine Function Page

Below the graphical display are a set of sliders and numerical readouts that would allow the user to modify useful parameters of the function in order to display different results. The function itself is prominently displayed next to the sliders and changes in response to alterations in the numbers. This provides a multiple-syntax approach to the learning--both the graphical and formulaic representations are provided for the student.

Formutator Cosine Function Page

To the right are the keywords, similar pages, and saved settings of the user and others.

Evaluations

1. Make the search more graphical. Since this is a tool for visual designers, continuing this work to its logical conclusion requires that students should be able to identify the formulas they need, at least in part, on sight. This is not a replacement for the tagging system, which works alongside the visual search and augments the results and the connections between each page.
2. Allow for more narrative. Students are going to want to talk about how they did X, Y, or Z in their own work. This is a valuable resource to add in for future students, so that conversations could be started around the sine function, for example, on how it can be used statically, dynamically, in games, in artwork, etc. Allowing user generated content to augment the existing page is rarely a bad idea. In this case, in fact, it serves the educational purpose by further clarifying the connection of math to the work of designers, based on the work of other designers.

2007-01-22

• intro
• games, but not just games
• applicable anywhere
• solvinh problems on paper and in your head

• branching decisions about how you teach things

• Transfer and expertise
• more expert learners are more able to learn new things
• being an expert already makes it easier
• confidence part of this
• have a context for applying the tools
• also knowing HOW to get the answers
• retrieving more information
• games allow people who have no expertise to role play expertise
• kids may just be experts just at a game iteself
• first feeling of expertise, even over adults
• but also within the game, you assume the role
• doling out needed expertise as the game goes on
• When experts use expert knowledge
• how you're taught is not much like what the experts do
• e.g. scientists
• what the experts do is alive
• and fun
• often, what the students do is not fun
• a writer, by contrast, does much the same thing at the expert and beginner levels
• try to do things, as an expert, as soon as possible
• don't separate the learning and the work of an expert
• simulation and interactivity can help
• failure is very different in a sim than when you're an actual expert
• Mitch Reznick
• People build stuff in order to learn
• machines, with code, that solve problems

• Materials
• How People Learn
• National Research Council
• things that cut across the theoretical boundaries
• very few cases in which adults learn differently from children

• design process
• there are many
• iterative
• rigid design cycle
• usually done with commercial realities
• may feel artificial
• feedback loops
• very straight steps
• don't really ever build anything
• knowing the steps from the get go
• recursion of the learning process

• play
• ritual quality
• entering into the "magic circle"
• give the game the benefit of the doubt
• may have to listen to rules
• assume a new persona
• react as your character rather than yourself
• playing "formally"
• but now adults play less formally
• poke this and see what happens
• people play with their cell phone
• cultural and age divide between this and the former
• more like children
• not much difference btwn structured play and experiment
• poking it with a sense of fun, the richest learning may take place
• brining learning and play back together
• if you understnad where play is happening
• nutrition game
• fun to play
• but the fun wasn't direcrted at the educational purpose
• play must be as close to learning as possible
• It is not necessarily true that if people have fun, they will learn
• drill and practice games from the 90s
• the product itself didn't give you what you needed to learn
• Civ and SimCity
• the designers made a decision to choose fun over learning
• there can be a balance between fun and learning
• but it has to be worked out
• important to consider
• free to play
• motivating themselves
• stepping out of their reality
• feelings of achievement
• have the activity give you information to do the activity better
• Civ
• you want to play the game better
• so you look up more stuff in Civilopedia
• flow experience
• balance btwn skill and challenge
• not enough skill - frustration
• not enough challenge - boredom
• chewing gum as a flow experience?
• getting people into flow and letting them engage and construct

• LOGO
• important for people to understand what they were for
• if the teacher doesn't know what its for, it's not going to work

• For Good Learning...
• Active
• Person doing the learning is in charge of it themselves
• this is particularly true in games
• do the new tools always supplany the old? not necessarily
• metacognition
• knowing what the need to know
• how they know it
• more effective learning
• otherwise, you're not in the driver's seat
• knowing what you need and how to get it
• opening up that awareness
• students considered participants in the learning process
• taking people to be "experts"
• Engaged
• not just into it or focused on it
• all learners come in with stuff in their head already
• some may be inaccurate
• you need to get at what is in their heads already
• you can make demographic leaps about what is there already
• figure out what they know and how they use it
• Constructed
• learning is constructed rather than received
• it may be a shallow experience for the learner unless they can do something with it
• constructed throuhg engagement
• they BUILD the learning, instread of receiving it
• Deep
• teach people deeply rather than broadly
• in history
• don't teach the whole of Amer history
• teach a few major events deeply
• e.g. teach all of ancient Greece
• politics
• science
• music
• etc.
• constructs expertise early
• scaffolding
• each new thing you construct builds on what you have and allows more to be built
• the religion may help you understand the math, e.g.

• Active Learning
• Experience of
• doing
• get kids to construct their own experiments
• vs. following a recipe for classic experiments
• observing
• Dialogue with
• self
• others
• but to be good...
• has to have the elements of good learning
• has to be self-motivated to some degree

• Thinking about games
• useful for teaching because
• emerging complexity
• small sets of rules that generate compleity
• games are testable and quantifiable
• you know which games are good
• and you know because they are fun
• they idea that something fun can be mapped onto and educational good is powerful
• learning itself is intensely pleasurable

• Syllabus
• 4 projects
• 1st
• literacy
• competantly expressing yourself within a given language
• could be the language of "design" e.g.
• project 3 is similar to project 2
• scheduling a lesson presentation
• anxiety about getting everybody to present everything
• readings
• course site
• handouts
• links, etc.

• Outline form
• lame attempt at active learning
• may help in retention
• may have experimental validity
• or not

• Now Group Projects, etc.
• active learning

• Measurement
• How do you measure good learning?
• In a rule-based activity, there are feedback loops, there is evaluation
• Decision points in the game could be an evaluation point
• Possible to be constantly testing
• Have to allow for them to do something in a new way
• did they get the result?
• even if they didn't follow the procedure?
• Human evalution, in addtion to the preceding
• Also, formal test
• Using SimCity as part of a larger experience, larger educational module
• simcity as a scaffold
• able to ask better questions about the rest of the curriculum
• the condition to go on is synnomimous with understanding the lesson
• make sure the things you're testing for are related to what they need to know
• not just busy work
• you should get something that helps you play the game better
• Interface
• separate, in a way from the learning goals
• a good learning experience with a crap interface is a problem

2007-01-29

• Good Learning
• active learning
• self directed
• controlled
• metacognitive
• want to invite people with the understanding that it's worth their attention
• constructed on pre-existing knowledge
• define the relevancy to yourself
• related to play
• self-directed
• voluntary
• Deep Learning
• conceptual frameworks for how the facts realte to each other
• understood within the framework
• towards expertise
• knows what they know
• and what they don't
• have a conceptual framework of their own knowledge
• right back to metacog
• you have control over the info you know
• expertise is a gradient
• you can be a little bit of an expert
• domain-specific
• and you can decide what that domain is
• related to play
• make believe
• pleasure
• controversial
• motivation
• intrinsic
• extrinsic

• The Flow State
• Mihayi Csicksenmihayi
• watched their work/play
• 30 yrs of research
• posited the flow state
• Skill x Challenge
• too much skill x not enough challenge = boredom
• not enough skill x too much challenge = anxiety
• right balance = flow state
• The pleasure portion connect to the flow state
• pleasurable to meet challenges

• Play
• self-directed
• voluntary
• constructed
• engagement
• Play article
• working backwards from playing games
• at a point, there may be a breakthrough --> flow
• you can invite someone into a process in which they may achieve flow
• Good learning and play are equal?
• sort of depends on def of play
• play as outside of everyday life?
• used to be the definition, up to 10 yrs ago
• a ritual undertaking for entertainment purposes
• more like play, as in freedom of movement or exploration
• exploring potentiality
• play like "play on a steering wheel"
• the play within a system, be it mechanical or social
• seeing where the boundaries are
• hence the pleasure portion of where the skill and challenge balance
• Do animals play?
• Seem to
• They learn about their environment and their species
• Play at hunting behaviors, dominance, etc.
• Pleasure
• produced by self-driven exploration
• found inside of games
• Setting up boundary exploration situations for themselves
• Even as adults
• We are constantly pushing boundaries in a world of blurred domain edges
• Examples of playful learning
• Biochemical evidence?
• the loss of self-consciousness measured in MRIs during flow state
• Mind No Mind
• Mindfulness
• Zen
• Chomsky
• Can we even get at the deep structure of play in the same way as language?
• Or are both just beyond our reach of understanding
• Virtuoso Devices
• Stick the processor into something that does one thing well?
• and yet, they were using playful, multifunction devices that allowed them to do stuff

• There's a sweet spot in all three of these

• Flow v. Play
• A fireman might be in a state of flow
• but not necessarily in a state of play
• because of consequences
• How much does the outcome matter?
• Context and expertise
• play allows experiencing safely
• role-playing experience without consequences
• People want to feel that what they're doing relates to life in some way
• Visions of themselves as experts

• Literacy
• Literacy is the ability to decode language in a domain and encode new statements within it
• Any domain may have its own:
• facts
• symbols
• recurring ideas
• And you'd need to construct new ideas using these
• Still there are gradations here
• May not be a complete expert, but there is a threshold
• Well-formed and valid?
• TEaching a literacy
• One at which you are already adept
• James Gee

• Games
• Highly-defined artifacts that invite play
• Losing of self
• therefore difficult to watch yourself at play
• tough to make yourself the first model
• Prompts, etc.
• Civilopedia
• Going back and forth within play states
• Don't need to play all the time
• Okay to prompt, scaffold, help, etc.
• Doesn't need to be play from start to finish

• Transfer and Learning
• Chap. 3
• Helping people see the potential transfer implications of what they are learning
• Finding test subjects
• measuring effective learning
• Expertise within domain
• At the beginning of experience
• you may have existing cultural knowledge
• upon which learning is constructed
• transfer of existing knowledge into new learning
• Language learning
• knowing one language helps learning another
• Finding the analogues
• Learning grammar
• insulting in English, because you speak it
• But required in French
• in which case you might learn English grammar
• taking control of your learning process
• and making it clear why you may need to know
• Assessment
• Boundaries of transfer are porous
• the way in which something is useful is not what you may assume and know
• therefore assessment is tricky
• Looking at how quickly new learning is accomplished
• Need the cooperation of the learner
• as an informant
• finding eval and assess at smaller intervals and lower levels
• Feedback loops the help evaluate the degree to which transfer is occuring
• transfering one learned skill in the game to another case in the game

• Motivation
• How do you get someone to do something?
• Or get them to WANT to do something?
• Goals
• Intrinsic
• envisioning yourself as an expert
• are there not many opportunities to feel like an expert
• having the experts title
• how they view themselves may affect motivation
• role-playing
• reduced consequences
• framework of doing for real
• self-esteem
• satisfaction of being expert
• video game master is the first feeling of expertise
• not only am I great at this
• but my parents and teacher suck at it
• Extrinsic

• Attention
• How do you get someone who is doing seomthing to KEEP doing it?

• Design
• Cycles
• Metacognitive process
• Start thinking about how we teach and get taught with Design

• Founding A School
• One home-schooled student at a time
• Depth vs. Breadth
• At this school, they work on one particular subject over a year
• Educational groupware project
• Your portfolio is accessible to other students
• Buying the Bettman archive!
• Better to focus on a few photographs that people could contrast with each other
• And then they could teach each other
• had potential for originality
• working within contraints
• makes the system knowable
• and studiable
• and can form boundaries that are interesting to explore
• students informing each others work
• in a limited system, more able to critique each other
• Very game-like here
• Pleasure in constraint
• can be known
• and beaten
• know where challenge is coming from
• infinite potentialities make the game unplayable
• so why is this
• educational?
• satisfying?
• knowing how things can be
• constrained
• systematized

• Homework
• Norman
• Design as conversation/communication
• Chap 9 Bransford
• Examples of Playful Learning
• Look at the design cycle page

2007-02-05

• Alphabet video
• Constructing learning on existing knowledge
• Phonics
• Makes groups of letter, then words
• Using onomatopoea

• Playful learning
• Tree climbing
• Charades
• heuristics
• communication
• learning gambits and strategies
• adding and substracting
• learning math with candy
• knowledge is useful to them... even if it's candy
• more of a testing mechanism than a teaching one
• Reading code on the floor
• spatially learning and organizing
• spatial naviagation metaphors, esp. on Internet
• Breaking things
• Kids like to break things
• need to be in a space where that's allowed
• Making messes: bad or good?
• Transgressive behavior
• Motivation
• for learning
• for performance
• fun with boxes
• get in trouble for breaking the boundaries
• museums
• learning about DNA at a science museum
• wandering around and looking for what you like
• multiple affordances
• self directed
• spatial relationships in museums -- running around
• Powers of 10 at Rose Planetarium
• using you body to understand how to process information
• hike with solar system
• learning how to juggle within a week
• quickly divided into teachers and learners
• group solidarity
• word games
• crosswords
• no judgements
• satisfaction of finishing it
• learning the language
• understand the clues
• in games, what you learn is how to play the games
• there is the possibility, at least, that the knowledge is useful elsewhere
• community and identity
• crossworders
• scrabble players
• geriatrics and mental puzzles
• doing Sudoku
• like learning, but not quite
• not necessarily pedagogical
• memorizing things with melody
• singing the multiplication song
• making songs about other lessons
• make your own toys
• The Land of Make Believe
• DIY
• building a context in which you perceive yourself as an expert
• making special items yourself
• the new coolness of making you own stuff
• cost of doing it yourself
• status of being DIY
• playing with science kits
• watching things in action
• seeing how they work
• books and stories
• going from reading
• to writing you own endings
• to drawing the covers and illustrations
• remembering with what you were doodling
• what do you do with your hands
• how does this help you memorize
• on the sly
• sneaking in expression
• lose recess, get in trouble
• learning to ride a motorcycle and language
• nuances with each
• nuance in the environment
• nuance in language usage
• observing particular details
• finding the tiny relevent things
• immediately tangible
• stimulated by the relevent detail
• foregrounding
• automatic
• thinking in your language
• getting the other language out fo your head
• not being worried about how bad you sound
• interactive design
• also not very forgiving
• systems don't make the intuitive leaps that we do
• Zork, for example, did not forgive
• building tents without instruction or verbal communication
• organize materials
• miming things out
• social dynamics
• some teams self-organized, some didn't
• organizers, taking inventory
• fun to watch the chaotic people
• War Gaming
• learning about strategy and tactics
• experiencing the effects of what these methods do
• Sign Language poem
• learning visually
• picking up the clues in sign language by guessing
• gave the students a big hint
• being told how to approach the problem of learning
• Static electricity wars
• shuffling on carpet with slippers
• figured out how to build you own weapons
• learning to zap siblings

• Website
• http://a.parsons.edu/~desedua/07

• Chapter 9
• What technology does well
• establishing a role play context
• scaffolding
• automatic a piece of the learning that you don't have yet
• forming hypothesis of how this gets done
• moving around in the formal space
• lots of overlap with formal inquiry process
• seeing that you're fulfilling these parts of the process
• artificial process, but you learn it

• Assignment
• Make the teaching of a literacy playful
• e.g.
• language-based literacy
• fontography
• programming concepts
• competancy in a communication
• must think about where the person is
• Design Cycle
• Knowledge As Design
• by D. N. Perkins
• looked at the way designers think about problems
• to see if there was something there for learners
• Learner should think of themselves as the designer of their own knowledge
• purpose
• structure
• model cases
• evaluation
• Age/Target
• what kind of group specific audience
• where the learning would happen
• what actual media format you're using
• Think of this in a digital or interactive context
• Not linear
• writing books
• making movies
• giving lectures
• 9 sections
• state these explicitly
• only need to do:
• design problem
• resources
• state this as a problem in paragraph form
• after the thinking of the topic
• statement of the problem
• e.g.
• topic is yoga for preschoolers
• problem is how do we make yoga accessible for preschoolers who don't have the cultural background to know it already
• resources
• see what other people are doing that is kind of like it
• research into the actual subject
• basically a bibliography
• URLs and publication names for at least 3 things
• find a book as close to what you're working on and read the bibliography
• publish some portion of your material
• look at the links provided on the site
• idea sketches
• brainstorming by yourself
• not really collaboration
• play ideas off against others
• design question
• state some kind of hypothesis
• if i go about the problem this way, that might be the key to solving the problem
• concept
• this is what I'm going to do
• the first presentation
• purpose
• a la Perkins
• why are you doing this
• diffent from the problem and questions
• what do you hope to get out of this?
• what do you hope the user will get out of this?
• what ought to be the outcome

2007-02-12

• Design Cycle
• Can prototype, but it's not necessary
• except for the last one
• This is not always exactly linear
• but the presentations are due in line
• but you may, in reality, go back and forth over them

• James Gee
• The principles are his own invention
• Worth using as these as principles as a checklist

• Literacy
• The ability to understand and manipulate the symbols of a semiotic domain
• Semotic domain
• a communications "system" capable of conveying a unique message

• Projects
• Korean letters
• Latin and Korean letters are taught at the same time
• supplemental products for parents to give their kids
• antagonistic to school?
• or can it work in tandem?
• Vocational literacy
• Ideas of work and play
• figuring out ways to make connections about jobs and careers
• and their hobbies and other interests
• Classical Music
• Terms and forms
• Applying them to current forms
• Tourists
• Geographic literacy
• Navigational literacy
• 3D Games
• How to take a taxi
• how to bargain with people
• getting a metro card
• Portugese
• for people in a relationship with a Brazilian
• sharing language and culture with your partner
• Mine
• Clay Shirky
• Social Software
• Rocky's Boots
• find this?
• StarLogo
• Be aware that there are two issues
• The literacy
• The self-efficacy
• Remember to teach the literacy with an eye toward self-efficacy
• Look at Logo Blocks
• and Max/MSP or Puredata
• DJ Music
• Newphonia Must Fall
• by Kid Koala
• DDR
• Guitar Hero
• Plastic Man
• custom system for recording music by scratching
• reproducing music by scratch motion
• Visual Language of Comics
• Time
• Framing
• Relationship to motion graphics
• Using one literacy to teach another
• See if Saul Bass has written about this
• or Kyle Cooper
• or Garson Yu
• or Hayao Miyazaki
• Food
• learning the process for making an preparing food
• using food to understand other cultures
• NYT article Michael Pollan
• Omnivore's Dilemma
• Harvest Moon
• raising of the animals for food
• knowing more about your food when it's alive
• Jewelry Making
• Juggling
• Tactile, kinesthetic
• Science
• Gravity kit
• Politically charged
• Are we teaching science?
• Ever since Sputnik
• But what is taught in school in no way represents what scientists do
• How could we better introduce science to kids who migth have this aptitude?
• PhysComp/Electronics
• Soft switch
• scrapbooking
• bringing mothers and daughters together
• conductive thread/paints
• basic electronic principles
• paper craft boxes, etc.
• Girl Scout robotics
• a young child could teach an adult something
• new to the scrapbooking community
• Context of Patterns in graphic design history
• evoking a historical period graphically
• changing context depending on how the pieces are put together
• importance of hinting
• getting the information as needed
• Ecology/Recycling
• making science exciting
• understanding where stuff comes from
• using existing materials for stuff
• RFID chips and handheld
• Can the learners absorb the literacy lesson?
• Derive it from first principles
• you could make paper without knowing anything else about ecology

• Homework
• Read "Rules of Play" Chap. 3-6 for 2/26
• Presentation
• Concept
• What are they going to learn and why?
• Form
• What you want people to be doing
• what is it?
• Idea sketches
• can just hold them up on paper
• can do visual brainstorming
• brainstorming/conversing with yourself

• Resources
• Content w/in the domain
• How are others teaching content?
• Is anyone doing anything like this?
• Theory?
• Metaphor
• e.g. The Diamond Age
• Ender's Game