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