Class Notes

Notes from the class.

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
  • 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
    • 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