Class Notes
Notes from the class.
2007-01-22
- intro
- games, but not just games
- 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
- 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
- what the experts do is alive
- 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
- rigid design cycle
- usually done with commercial realities
- 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
- react as your character rather than yourself
- 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
- 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
- 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
- stepping out of their reality
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Outline form
- lame attempt at active learning
- may have experimental validity
- 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
- even if they didn't follow the procedure?
- Human evalution, in addtion to the preceding
- Using SimCity as part of a larger experience, larger educational module
- 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
- 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
- want to invite people with the understanding that it's worth their attention
- constructed on pre-existing knowledge
- define the relevancy to yourself
- Deep Learning
- conceptual frameworks for how the facts realte to each other
- understood within the framework
- towards expertise
- have a conceptual framework of their own knowledge
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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?
- They learn about their environment and their species
- Play at hunting behaviors, dominance, etc.
- Pleasure
- produced by self-driven exploration
- 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
- 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
- How much does the outcome matter?
- 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:
- 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
- TEaching a literacy
- One at which you are already adept
- 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
- Helping people see the potential transfer implications of what they are learning
- measuring effective learning
- 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
- 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
- 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
- how they view themselves may affect motivation
- 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
- Attention
- How do you get someone who is doing seomthing to KEEP doing it?
- Design
- Start thinking about how we teach and get taught with Design
- Founding A School
- One home-schooled student at a time
- 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 can form boundaries that are interesting to explore
- students informing each others work
- in a limited system, more able to critique each other
- Pleasure in constraint
- know where challenge is coming from
- infinite potentialities make the game unplayable
- knowing how things can be
- Homework
- Norman
- Design as conversation/communication
- Examples of Playful Learning
- Look at the design cycle page
2007-02-05
- Alphabet video
- Constructing learning on existing knowledge
- Makes groups of letter, then words
- Playful learning
- Charades
- learning gambits and strategies
- adding and substracting
- 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?
- 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
- spatial relationships in museums -- running around
- Powers of 10 at Rose Planetarium
- using you body to understand how to process information
- learning how to juggle within a week
- quickly divided into teachers and learners
- word games
- crosswords
- satisfaction of finishing it
- in games, what you learn is how to play the games
- there is the possibility, at least, that the knowledge is useful elsewhere
- geriatrics and mental puzzles
- 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
- 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
- playing with science kits
- watching things in action
- books and stories
- 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
- lose recess, get in trouble
- learning to ride a motorcycle and language
- nuances with each
- nuance in the environment
- observing particular details
- finding the tiny relevent things
- stimulated by the relevent detail
- automatic
- thinking in your language
- getting the other language out fo your head
- not being worried about how bad you sound
- interactive design
- systems don't make the intuitive leaps that we do
- Zork, for example, did not forgive
- building tents without instruction or verbal communication
- 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
- 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
- Chapter 9
- What technology does well
- establishing a role play context
- 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
- competancy in a communication
- must think about where the person is
- Design Cycle
- Knowledge As Design
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- purpose
- 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
- 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
- or can it work in tandem?
- Vocational literacy
- figuring out ways to make connections about jobs and careers
- and their hobbies and other interests
- Classical Music
- Applying them to current forms
- Tourists
- how to bargain with people
- Portugese
- for people in a relationship with a Brazilian
- sharing language and culture with your partner
- Mine
- Be aware that there are two issues
- Remember to teach the literacy with an eye toward self-efficacy
- DJ Music
- Plastic Man
- custom system for recording music by scratching
- reproducing music by scratch motion
- Visual Language of Comics
- Relationship to motion graphics
- Using one literacy to teach another
- See if Saul Bass has written about this
- Food
- learning the process for making an preparing food
- using food to understand other cultures
- NYT article Michael Pollan
- Harvest Moon
- raising of the animals for food
- knowing more about your food when it's alive
- Science
- 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
- bringing mothers and daughters together
- basic electronic principles
- 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
- getting the information as needed
- Ecology/Recycling
- understanding where stuff comes from
- using existing materials for stuff
- 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
- Idea sketches
- can just hold them up on paper
- can do visual brainstorming
- brainstorming/conversing with yourself
- Resources
- How are others teaching content?
- Is anyone doing anything like this?