Serious Play, Serious Papers

Okay, it's time to step back and think about the bigger picture (while I sit on hold waiting for the Apple store rep.)

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The first paper should be an RER paper (Review of Educational Research journal) and a smaller version for JLS (Journal of Learning Sciences).

The paper begins with a call to study gaming as a resource for improving learning. That's a big claim with a mixed history that must be acknowledged.

We begin with some data of two sorts. One on game playing; one on where new technologies are taking gaming. Karen Billings might be able to get us some access to data we need. I'd love to have some visual representations of game sectors, users, demographics, etc. If not Karen, then the E3 conf in May will have info like that in the seminars. We can also talk about Mimi Ito's work on the connectivity/networking aspects of technology. [I am continually amused by the formal educational instituional effort to integrate technology into the curriculum because it is such an obsolete view of technology. There's an article there...for Educational Leadership magazine.

Now we've connected with the status quo. We must go back and acknowledge some bad history, going back to the early 70s stuff on games in schools, not computer games. There was a time when classes were doing "centers" or "activity centers" that kids rotated through during the day in groups, and ed'l games were a part of that. It died, largely with the death of activity centers, which teachers found too hard to manage.

Okay.

The next part of the first paper has to answer the question about the current or continuing relevance or relationship of games > computer/video games > MMOGs to education or learning, especially given that history. That is a matter of working through the arguments put forth by others: James Gee, Kirt Squire, Dan Shaffer, among others. It is probably important to characterize their work in terms of learning theory, since we will be using that alignment later in the work. We should also characterize the nature of inquiry or points of view on games and learning. Without doing the homework I've yet to do, my sense of it is that there are two: 1) games as vehicles for curricular content (teach X using games), and 2) games as play, as phenomenon to study in order to improve traditional education. I was a member of the last group till this year. My take was that, as others have pointed out, gamers learn and do very complex things in games, and they tend to have a relatively easy time of it. (They don't get Ds, in all the referents of that.)

So now it's time to introduce the notion that there is a third point of view on the value of games, and thus a completely different additional research agenda for them. This value comes from the view of games as one of many other genres of technology innovation that have had/continue to have a profound cultural impact, especially on the young. Mimi Ito's work figures in here. As does some of the work by Steve Johnson, Henry Jenkins, Barry Wellman, and Manuel Castells, among others. These folks are looking as sociologists, anthropologists, and ethnographers, at the cultural dimensions of networked technologies, most of which are the new channels for gaming. Oh, we need to discuss MMOGs and social spaces like SL. There is a literature from the MOO/MUD/MUSE/MUSH days to pull in here too. These are the early networked games and communities.

Next we connect school with non-school culture. HIstorically that point of view has focused on the disconnect between school culture and home cultures of non-white, non-middle class populations. We are arguing that the same divide exists between youth culture and school, a new version of the digital divide. Now I have heard anecdotal evidence that low income and minority kids are in MMOGs or playing networked consoles games. We need hard data on that. Anyhow, this is where Luis Moll's funds of knowledge come in. I've elaborated on his point elsewhere in another entry. Now we're poised for the kill, which is represented in that entry.

After the big pop, we need to hint at a needed research agenda (which, of course, we intend to get funded and do ourselves). What sort of systematic inquiry needs to occur in order to back up our proposition that gaming culture offers a deep reservoir for educators to draw from, that isn't trivial.

Here's where I'm less well thought through: research issues. This we need to brainstorm as a gamex collective. Here are some early thoughts. I also want to think more about: communities of practice, situated learning as it relates to game culture. If we studied MMOG communities as we treat studies of Papua New Guinea, what might we choose to observe and validate?

• language


• representation of information


• knowledge sharing and knowledge creation


• eye candy/ear candy (i think classrooms are sterile compared to games)

I see several papers (and dead people).
Review of Research article that frames work to date in the field and steals the higher ground of agenda setting.
A formal propoposal to request funding...from EA or MS or Sony or another game maker looking for image improvement.
Essays/opinion pieces of various sorts for places like Educational Leadership (an ASCD journal)
Research articles, small, one at a time forays into our research agenda

Can you come down a day early or stay a day late at Jan/Feb f2f?