Battling for Opportunities to Simulate History

I have visited the national historic site for the Battle of New Orleans twice (last time when NECC was in NO). Taking a leisurely steamboat ride from the riverfront mall up the Mississippi, you disembark at the site and listen patiently to a park ranger explaining how Andrew Jackson marshaled his forces, combined with the racially diverse city populace, and held off the evil British soldiers. If you’re lucky, the park ranger will fire off a replicated musket shot to give you a feel for what the battle was like. On the ride back to New Orleans, you can purchase a toy gun or perhaps a coffee mug in the ship’s gift shop to commemorate your visit, and Jackson’s victory.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of our national park system. Somebody once said the Europeans have their cathedrals while the Americans have their national parks. But what if we could play the role of Andrew Jackson, face the same decisions on deploying limited resources against a superior opponent? Could we experience history better if history were simulated for us within the context of a videogame?

Some say, “Yes!” One advocate for this approach is Dr. Kevin Kee over at Brock University, who serves as primary investigator of The Simulating History Project: Best Practices for Simulating History. Here’s the raison d’être for the site:

Canadians are concerned about their understanding of their history, and especially about the way that it is taught. The “Simulating History” project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is exploring the “best potential” for educational computer simulations (sometimes called computer “serious games”) to teach Canadian history.

The site serves as a blog, with entries detailing various school projects, news from other university efforts, and various serious games related to history. There are also discussions concerning the use of educational videogames in teaching history. One in particular was pointed out to me by Dr. Shawn Graham. “Towards a Theory of Good-History-through-Good-Gaming for Historians and Educators” is by Kevin Kee and Shawn Graham, with contributions by Marion Barfurth, Michel Blondeau, Mike Clare, Patrick Dunae, Andrew Large, John Lutz, and Chris Tan. It offers a cogent argument for the use of sophisticated videogames (namely those in the Civilization series) for use in history instruction; offers the counter-arguments against their use in classrooms; then offers a dialogue for the contributors listed above to hash out their thoughts on the topic.

It’s an excellent online article, and it offers insight to the process of appropriating a technology for pedagogical purposes. Now perhaps somebody might try and incorporate the Battle of New Orleans in a historically appropriate videogame. I suspect it will offer greater insights to the processes surrounding the battle than a site visit offers. Perhaps someday, visitors will be able to purchase the game in the steamboat’s gift shop.

Programming a New AquaMOOSE? Virtual Real Worlds Using MellaniuM & Unreal 2

The famous AquaMOOSE study came out of Georgia Tech a few years back, led by Amy Bruckman. High school students were exposed to a game developed by the team focusing on three-dimensional mathematics (think of Logo, only in 3-D). However, the students had high expectations going into the study, and were disappointed with the graphical sophistication of the home-brewed software. Since then, and maybe because of Team Bruckman’s findings, educational gaming research seems to have shifted more to examining pedagogical potentials within existing products.

On many levels, this makes sense. When one considers the multi-person staffs, high dollar budgets, and extended timelines for creating top notch videogames, replicating that level of sophistication becomes problematic on the typical budgetary levels professors are used to winning in grants. Big grants offer a nice exception to this rule. Even then, the funds may run out, as we saw earlier this year when Castronova over at Indiana was forced to pull the plug on Arden, his ambitious Shakespearean-themed VW.

So existing game engines are hot, especially for serious game development. Appropriate the engines already developed and focus on the pedagogy … this seems to be a guiding principle. Fortunately, folks are out there working to help us utilize some of the state of the art platforms for business and educational purposes.

I spoke via e-mail recently with Joe Rigby, over at MellaniuM, who offers a look into his company’s product that allows highly detailed representations of real world objects created in AutoCAD to be exported into the Unreal 2 engine. Elaine Alhadeff has written an excellent entry in which she explores the product and interviews Rigby. The video Rigby has shows things like a World War II Spitfire, half in shadow, half in light; a motorcycle with multi-spoke wheels (each spoke standing out in detail); and a horse-drawn carriage that looks incredibly detailed.

The product highlights the notion of “virtual real worlds,” where users can explore realistic representations of locations that exist now, in the past, or in imagination. Training or exploration within such environments may be advantageous to police teams learning to deal with emergency situations; military groups learning urban warfare; and college students interested in exploring architecture, archaeology, or historical contexts.

Details within virtual real worlds can be extremely important, and products such as MillaniuM’s offer tantalizing possibilities to programmers.

References:
Elliott, J., Adams, L., & Bruckman, A. (2002). No magic bullet: 3D video games in education. Proceedings of ICLS 2002. Seattle, Washington, October 2002. [Online]. Available: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/aquamoose-icls02.pdf

Stay Off the Grass: Bypassing Content Filters for Educational Gaming & Web 2.0

I recall hearing a story (somewhere down the line … probably in a college lecture) about an architect hired to design a cluster of buildings. Once built and ready for sidewalks connecting the entrances, he ordered grass seeded between the buildings and delayed sidewalk construction a while. In a few months the grass grew, and people going in and out of the buildings made their own pathways to the doors. At that point, the architect ordered the sidewalks constructed … following the elegant and efficient pathways created by the people.

I remember that story every time I walk through a college or school campus and see paths through the grass where people follow more efficient routes than the sidewalks. At UNT, despite signs pleading with students to stay off the grass, and rope barriers cutting off students’ favorite route between the two main education buildings, the powers that be finally relented and built a sidewalk for the most popular shortcut.

What a powerful idea it was for the architect to simply wait and let the people … the end users … figure out the best places for the sidewalks to go! Think of the money saved, and the aesthetics involved. What a powerful analogy the story is for educational technology, too. “Sidewalks,” or connections to information and resources, must be built for organizations. But, when the connections are dictated without input from those using the connections, efficiency suffers. And those connecting to resources within an organization (“walking to the doors between buildings”) often find their own ways that are more efficient than is what dictated from above.

This helps explain the ongoing conundrum Web 2.0 tools face in academic environments, including instructional gaming. I was reminded of the sidewalk story while catching up with some blogs recently. In late October, uber-blogger Robert Scoble noted during a discussion with his son’s high school buddies that Facebook and MySpace were blocked at school. This didn’t stop them, of course, and Scoble notes various tips the teens had to get around the filters. Scoble himself simply turns on his Verizon wireless data card and bypasses the filter altogether. Fooey on over-controlling administrators, Scoble says.

What is most interesting to me are the attitudes people have toward school filters. They follow the same patterns some people have in their attitudes toward instructional videogames in schools. Namely, some folks think that using the Web for anything besides serious purposes is a waste of time, and should not be allowed in school. The problem is, they want to dictate where to pave the sidewalks. What is “serious” is what they define as serious; anything else should be banned.

Reading the many comments Scoble received is more interesting than his original post. Some folks just don’t get it. One poster wrote: “I’m sorry, but why should we be encouraging kids to circumvent school policies?” Another suggested time would be better spent with teachers than on Facebook. Scoble pointed out that Ray Ozzie, Walt Mossberg, and Joi Ito are all on Facebook. But, because the school blocks the site, accessing these experts in their respective fields while at school is “inappropriate.” He sums up: “But, no, you keep thinking that Facebook is just for fooling around.” Ouch.

The arguments go downhill from there. They should access these sites on their time, not the teacher’s time. Scoble counters: they’re still blocked during recess, before and after school, and that is his son’s time. Teaching your son to circumvent policies he disagrees with may lead him to disregard policies on drugs and guns, too. Scoble dismisses this argument: “You think Wikipedia even belongs in the same sentence as guns and drugs. Discussion over.” Some sided with Scoble, stating that learning to circumvent filters is a good life skill to pick up in school.

The issue of filters and their impediment to teaching was brought up earlier in November by Miguel Guhlin. The Web 2.0 product at issue was Google Docs. An administrator on the Texas technology directors’ listserv noted that Google Docs was used by both teachers and students in their district, but had recently been blocked. Miguel has been railing against folks preventing the adoption of important technologies in school settings for years, and he used this opportunity to again deride those demanding we all stay on the sidewalk.

Finally, a poster on the Serious Games listserv, which is filled with academics and industry professionals, noted, in a tone of bemused frustration, that a game he had worked on for a school was now blocked at the very same school.

-*-

I have written two articles for TechEdge that address techniques students use for bypassing filters. These were aimed at helping educate teachers and administrators who are responsible for preventing students in their care from accessing inappropriate sites, and giving them the sense that filters are far from perfect. In the second article, I noted that educators are often more frustrated by the filters than their students. One teacher confided he used his own laptop and Internet connection to bypass the filter at school, essentially following the route Scoble suggested.

Here are some things I’ve noted in comments over on Miguel’s blog and in my articles:

1. Filters are in schools because Congress says they should be. The Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA) dictates that schools receiving federal funds must block objectionable content. It will literally take an act of Congress to get rid of filtering, so don’t hold your breath. Besides, it is “for the children,” and consequently few would want to vote against it. Never mind if it really is beneficial for children, or in fact detrimental. It has been labeled as “for the children,” ergo est. Folks peeved at filters should aim their frustration at politicians, not school personnel.
2. Most filters used by schools are run by the big filtering companies. When something is blocked, for better or worse, rightly or wrongly, save your ire for those companies, not the hapless school administrators. It is true IT personnel can “open” a site deemed harmful by the filtering company, but doing so will involve discussion with the appropriate administrator or committee.
3. The big filtering companies don’t block sites out of spite. They have automated spiders scouring the net, and looking at sites visited by subscribers. When a site fits the criteria for blocking, its URL is added to a list that is updated daily. There is (usually) no Grinch-like administrator hunting for good sites to block. The process is typically automatic. This leads to one of the primary criticisms against filters, that they are reactionary. It usually takes a real live person to go back and correct mistakes made by the bots.
4. As long as there are filters in schools, there will be ways around the filters. A Canadian reference book published in PDF by Citizenlab.org went up recently. Kids can set up proxy sites on their home computers and bypass the filters, use web-enabled devices, or use a host of other techniques. Barring access to anything online is akin to shouting at the wind. People will get irritated the sidewalk doesn’t go where they want, and will get their feet muddy anyway.
5. Unfortunately, along with sites advocating sax and violins, gambling and other vices, Web 2.0 sites are lumped in with the R rated stuff. The reason: liability. Schools don’t want students to make unregulated posts in public parts of the Web using school equipment.
6. Also unfortunately, “gaming” is lumped in with filtering companies’ “bad” categories, because gaming is seen as a waste of time on computers. This includes serious gaming, academic and educational gaming, and often even Google searches for gaming sites. And that’s too bad. The bots can no more distinguish an academically valuable game useful for the classroom from a flash arcade game that is pure drivel.

So there it is. Stay on the sidewalks. But, if you see a quicker, more efficient route to your destination … just follow the path.

Dissin’ the Women: How Videogame Makers Discriminate Against Female Players

I found a nice site across the pond tonight, the DigiPlay Initiative. Here’s an excerpt from their About page:

The Digiplay Initiative [is] a research collective specializing in consumer research in the areas of digital games, adoption of technologies, online well-being and intellectual property crime. It undertakes commercial and academic research as well as providing online informations services to the research community. It is made up of researchers from the Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC) at the University of Manchester and The Department of Psychology at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) in the UK.

The Digiplay Initiative is led by Dr Jason Rutter over at the Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition at The University of Manchester, and Dr. Jo Bryce, Director of Research at the Cyberspace Research Unit, University of Central Lancashire. The most recent journal article published by the duo is, “Not much fun: The constraining of female video gamers.” Here’s the abstract:

The growth in video gaming as a leisure practice has not engaged female and males players equally. At school age, females play video games less often than their male contemporaries and the gender differences increases with age. This paper explores the social contexts which contribute to constraining female access gaming. It highlights a ‘career’ approach to video gaming in which females are excluded from an early age, marginalized through their gaming career and have a tendency to leave video gaming earlier than males because of other constraints including time. The paper briefly suggest that some innovations in video games have a particular appeal to female gamers but that this is not a solution to female exclusion from this leisure activity.

The paper shows how game makers discriminate against female players in various ways, and includes reference to research performed by the authors, including ethnographic studies of public gaming events in Great Britain. The paper may hold insights to educational game developers regarding practices to avoid in order to maintain a more equitable playing field.

There is a considerable amount of educational gaming research material on the DigiPlay Initiative’s site. Members can submit papers that have been published elsewhere for comments and future reference, making the site a dynamic online annotated bibliography. It’s a place well worth exploring.

References
Bryce, J., & Rutter, J. (2007). Poca diversión: Las barreras de las aficionados a los videojuegos/Not much fun: The constraining of female video gamers. ADOZ Journal of Leisure Studies, 31. 97-108.

Handheld Learning Conference, 2007

With all the talk recently surrounding the educational uses of handheld gaming platforms such as the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP, it makes sense that practitioners have banded together to form a conference on the topic. Andy Pulman blogs about the Handheld Learning Conference and Exhibition, 2007, that is taking place next week in London. A press release that Andy references gives more details.

Here’s a couple of key paragraphs in that press release from the Nintendo folks:

David Yarnton, General Manager, Nintendo UK says:
“The Handheld Learning Conference and Exhibition brings together so many thought-leaders it is natural that Nintendo gets involved with this important educational conference. As the biggest supplier of handheld entertainment, Nintendo is already driving learning across all age groups with its products, in particular the Touch Generations series, including Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old is Your Brain? and Big Brain Academy. So we’re delighted to play our part, furthering the developing role of handheld devices in learning.”

Graham Brown-Martin, Managing Director, Handheld Learning, says:
“The majority of gaming devices – and particularly those by Nintendo – all feature local and wide area networking capabilities, which are exploited by its software titles to enable positive social interaction and networks. Whilst the world has been focussing on the $100 laptop Nintendo had already developed one in the form of the Nintendo DS.”

Ouch. I think the OLPC people might be asking: Where is the keyboard for the DS? Anyways, that’s an argument for another day. Additional details on the conference are available at the conference’s official website.

On a side note, despite our noting the increased discussion surrounding the educational uses of the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP in Japan, Gaming Today informs us that both products have been banned from use on Japanese airlines. Fortunately, other airlines have not followed suit. My oldest will be glad to hear this, flying back from New England later this week, loaded down with several books and both mini consoles to fight the boredom and wait out potential delays.

Pop.Cosmo: Constance Steinkuehler’s New Blog on VWs

Constance Steinkuehler, over at U. Wisconsin, is shepherding a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to explore the pedagogical potentials within virtual worlds. Consequently, Steinkuehler and colleagues have begun a blog called pop.cosmo. Contributing authors to the blog include David Simkins and Sean Duncan.

In explaining the name, Steinkuehler notes that pop cosmopolitan refers to, “the ways that virtual worlds are becoming novel contexts for the development of new forms of civic engagement in a global, networked world.”  

The blog will serve as a platform for the research team to discuss ongoing research as well as transfer information regarding after school projects and other related goings-on. In a post on Terra Nova, Steinkuehler elaborates on the research team’s raison d’être:

… we empirically investigate key literacy practices that constitute successful MMO gameplay (such as scientific literacy, computational literacy, and reciprocal apprenticeship) & how those literacy practices connect up with life and learning beyond the virtual worlds themselves. Then, based on this understanding, we develop after school instructional programs that leverage MMOs to get kids involved in what we see as core 21st century skills (that are often under-emphasized in classrooms).

It looks like an interesting blog, and those interested in ongoing research of virtual worlds in education should stop by to take a look.

Elderly Turn to Videogames to Stay Mentally Fit

The Washington Post had a nice article recently about octogenarians using video games in order to keep their minds fit. A “brain health movement” is sweeping retirement communities nationwide, according to the article. Leslie Walker wrote that Nintendo’s Brain Age and other mentally strenuous video games have joined Bingo, Sudoku, and crossword puzzles as mechanisms to promote brain fitness in the aging and elderly.

Other video games offered by retirement communities to their citizens include one called Brain Fitness, and the virtual bowling game on the Nintendo Wii.

Brain fitness in general is booming, thanks in part to America’s aging population:

In fact, baby boomers may be the biggest catalyst of the brain-fitness boom. They started turning 60, and the nation’s over-65 population will double between 2000 and 2030 — from 35 million to 72 million people. That forecast has triggered an entrepreneurial rush to supply them with anti-aging products.

Next, Walker plugs a couple of related blogs, including SharpBrains.com, with whom I’ve recently traded links:

A growing body of research suggests that mental activity in middle age and earlier can help later in life. As a result, Web sites such as HappyNeuron.com are springing up to offer online games to people of all ages, while blogs like SharpBrains.com provide commentary on the fledgling industry.

Finally, Andrew Carle over at George Mason gets a nice quote:

“No technology trend in fitness has gotten more media attention than cognition training,” said Andrew Carle, a George Mason University professor who studies brain-training products. “What’s driving it is the jump we are seeing in Alzheimer’s, which is an age-related disease.”

References:
Walker, L. (2007, September 12). Keep your brain power up. The Washington Post, pp. HE09. [Online]. Retrieved September 22, 2007 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2007/09/10/AR2007091001879.html