Twitter’s race to being the worlds top classified small-ad channel.

Twitter is a text adventure game. The owners of the software control the rules, the user’s create the fiction and game-play is created though interactions with it. It’s a really popular game with players who assume similar charaters to those you’d find in any massive-multiplayer – the hero, the healer, the scout, the opportunist etc.,

A good virtual world is changed each time we enter it. This is sort of why educational-games are so awful, they don’t change.

The avatar you inhabit in Twitter, the agency it provides is as fictional an unreal as Warcraft’s Azeroth – and so are the characters. It’s fun while your mind processes information it finds satisfying. What is less discussed is that this is the hall-marks of social-engineering complete with in-equality ability to reduce the possible variance as it tinkers with rules (user names, banning countries and messages or blacking out communication etc.,). I can’t honestly say that I’d recommend Twitter as place I’d promote to what I see as ‘second wave’ adopters, who are more interested in quality than quantity – and here’s why.

Costonova said social game worlds are built around three common principles that apparently contribute strongly to their popularity. This seem all too real in Twitter.

The first principle is division of labor: Agents seem to desire avatars with unique abilities, by which they can provide individualized contributions to avatar society. The second principle is equality of opportunity: Agents seem to enjoy a rags-to-riches storyline, in which everyone starts out very weak and very poor, but then has the opportunity to advance through the application of time and skill to game play. The third principle is inequality of outcomes based on merit only: Agents seem to prefer game mechanisms that grant advantages of wealth and power only to avatars who have performed more meritorious actions (where “merit” is admittedly hard to define – working long hours at the game, being socially or politically skillful, etc.). Together, these three principles attempt to provide diversity, equality, and meritocracy, and this seems to be the most desired kind of society.

Perhaps Twitter for me has become a different experience. I find myself feeling as though I need to spend more and more time sifting though quantity (those with a profit-agenda) to find quality.  I’m finding the difference between Twitter and News-print classified-small-adds is just scrolling – and yet people are still ‘shouting’ out at conferences about Twitter to ‘new teachers’ as though it’s still 2007 – when Twitter was actually about more than farming your audience.

Ren’py – Interactive Fiction, Games, Stories – and culture.

You are probably aware of the graphic novel, and perhaps even the choose your own adventure type novel. This post is about how games and game culture have evolved from these, especially in non-english cultures, not least  Manga.

We tend to look at games and even comics as though western eyes, and it’s fair to say most of the games that arrive in Australian homes are support western culture. Numerous teacher’s I’ve met have used Scratch in their classrooms to teach programming and computational logic and a few have used game-engines to allow students to develop games, though this is a far less familiar sight.

Let me then introduce you to Ren’Py – A free game-engine that works on all platforms, including mobiles.

Ren’Py is a visual novel engine that helps you use words, images, and sounds to tell stories with the computer. These can be both visual novels and life simulation games. The easy to learn script language allows you to efficiently write large visual novels, while its Python scripting is enough for complex simulation games.

Sounds good huh? Free, not too hard, tells stories … something that easily goes over into computing and language arts …

But at this point you’re probably thinking – this is still too hard. Put aside your self-belief and think about this not as a game project, but something that allows kids to discover new cultures. Have a look at this blog, and pay attention to both the short development time, the manga-culture and how the pride the maker has found when others discover their game. What’s the first thing that your notice – the image is completely in-appropriate right? Run, but wait – literature is full of text that depicts mental pictures for a culture. Manga might just not be yours.

Try out Self Made Hero, Manga Shakespeare – is that a little more appealing? Maybe, but what I found interesting is that the game-maker links to Self Made Hero, and blogrolls Shakespeare. That was pretty amazing.

The video above is an example of someone creating a interactive fiction game, using Ren’Py. But that’s not as impressive as the way they’ve gone about justifying their work.

Granted, this will be no Girlfriend of Steel, I just wanted to test out the Ren’Py interface using Evangelion, my favorite anime series of all time. I became compelled to tackle the final episode of the series, I don’t know why. If I continue to make this VN test using the last episode, I may try to put in a choice at the end, whether or not Shinji comes to grip with himself or not, but I’m not sure.

I apologize for the extremely crappy quality. I used Cam Studio to record the video, and my computer has been acting rather slow as of late. And since I don’t have any OGG or mp3 files for the music (all I have of the Evangelion soundtrack is one CD), I just placed this song over the video while in Windows Movie Maker. The real game, for the time being, is silent.

Evangelion is a copyright of Gainax. Original scenario written by Hideaki Anno. Artwork by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. Music by Shiro Sagisu.

When I read that, and then thought about it, I wondered just how many teachers would make sense of what it took to make the video (given it says little about the game). Then down below in the comments, a conversation takes place, where someone helps improve the game.

When you are defining characters, include this line within the definition: show_side_image=Image(“ADMYC1A.png”, xalign=0.038, yalign=0.9). Of course, you can insert the name of your image name where ADMYC1A is.

I guess the point of this post is that games belong to a culture, and it’s really easy to forget that ‘western’ isn’t the only culture. At the same time, we judge what we see based largely on what we understand, and don’t look for the inter-connections between mediums and cultures. Perhaps most importantly, because we don’t look, we assume that something like Ren’Py is ‘too hard’ and we can take a easier road. What we miss is that there are millions of kids finding, reading, making and sharing things like this – they are learning and making connections between people and culture that result in work like this. I tried it out for a few hours – followed the wiki, added some drawings and really it wasn’t hard. So I gave it to the primary age home-test pilots (who know next to nothing about programming) and they did better than me.

So maybe, if you want to take a risk, throw this at students, see what they make of it. You might be amazed to find that to them, this culture is familiar territory.

10 considerations for bringing games into class

Before heading into using games in the classroom, there are a few considerations that are essential considerations. The biggest one surrounds understanding the culture of games, and from than developing a differentiated curriclum. Fun is not differentiation.

1. Physical structure of the setting

Video games are not played in physical groups, where everyone sits side by side.

2. Individual schedule

Play is an emotional activity, and the type of play (solo or group), who we play with and how often is a choice that game players make.

3. Individual work system

Gamers create systems of work using a range of tools, configurations and preferences. The more complex the game, the higher the need to create an individual system. For example: playing a game also invloves interacting with forums, websites, videos and people who are external to the classroom – constantly.

4. Routines and strategies

Games require very different strategies, not least social strategies and routines to optimise play experience. These are unlilkly to co-incide with those in the ‘traditional classroom’. How that is managed – without making play ‘un-fun’ is an art.

5. Visual organisation

Games are not orgnised in visual ways that are familiar or even related to ‘the desktop’. The more complex the game, the more individual the visual organisation will be. Students may have little or not experience of doing this, and additionally teachers may have no understanding of the game UX or the game-space.

6. Parent involvement

Parents should be involved to a greater extent. If parents don’t understand the power of play and games, expect a phone call.

7. Assessment Practices

Schools need to have a clear guide to understanding their students as ‘players’, customising the programming for each individual student, and monitoring outcomes so that games can be used to evidence achievement, knowledge and skill. Do not rely on in in-game scores or ‘badges’ as reliable indicators.

8. Cognitive Readyness

Cognitive readiness skills such as logging-in, pre-reading, communication, social, play, fine motor, imitation and group skills are all part of game-play.

9. Games are personal

Developing an individualized person and family-centered plan for each  student, rather than using a standard curriculum. (see individual schedule)

10. Visual Supports

Make the sequence of ‘dailies’ predictable and understandable – don’t fall into the trap of thinking play is immediately productive or motivating, simply because games can be ‘fun’. These supports can be imaginative – earned, flexible and individual (ideally).

 

Cross Posted: http://deangroom.com/forthewin/2012/01/10-considerations-for-games-in-the-classroom/

Filter Bubbles and Monocultures

“The governing pattern a culture obeys is a master story– one narrative in society that takes over the others, shrinking diversity and forming a monoculture.” F. S. Michaels

I’ve just bought “Monoculture: How One Story Is Changing Everything”, after reading the brief, but always to the point introduction on Brain Pickings, one blog I make the time to read. As time moves on, I find myself more interested in the nexus between story, technology and culture than I do ‘education’ per se, mostly as I find much of educational technology discussion insufficient to describe, let alone explain what I see when kids play multiplayer video-games. Increasingly I find Edu-Twitter less and less useful in terms of discovering new ideas for learning theory and hold a deep suspicion that ‘EdTech’ serves a market-need, and is highly artificial.

Your filter bubble is the personal universe of information that you live in online — unique and constructed just for you by the array of personalized filters that now power the web. -  Eli Pariser

This idea of a filter bubble is also really interesting – as clearly once inside the bubble, it’s hard to leave it.

Passive learning is better than collaboration

Why do we put kids in groups of 30 online (beyond the fact that this number represents a class). Why is it called collaborative learning?

I’d say the further you go past the number 3, the less productive learning becomes. In our game, when 3 kids work together  and 5 more passively watch, all will recount what happened as though they we’re actively engaged. Ask them  to repeat the activity individually, and those who collaborated originally fair no better than passive observers. In fact the passive’s often notice errors the collaborators made and correct them rather than repeat them.

In a document or test, having the benefit of correcting other’s mistakes is called cheating – in a game or virtual world it’s called learning – and learning in 30s would be a really dumb idea.

Are you adding Flow or ZPD to eLearning chemistry?

The concept of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) describes an optimal mental state where a person is complete occupied with a task that matches the person’s skills, being neither too hard (leading to anxiety) or easy (leading to boredom).

In many ways this is might appear similar to the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) educators might know this as the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help. Csikszentmihalyi sees flow in a more sophisticated way – from the domain of games.

Games are designed, or at least should be attempt to find that perfect balance that keeps us in flow. As technology improves, we can’t keep calling them video-games. They are haptic complex systems that you can stand and dance with, hold, wave, shake, press or hide in your pocket. Games are complicated learning-feedback systems and within them is the possibility of finding flow. Kids know this – they expect to find it and more often than not the commercial games industry delivers. Let’s just say that these things are learning management systems, they are just more sophisticated and enjoyable than most instructional design – especially the largely diabolical edu-games. Anyone that says learning should not be joyful should leave now.

In the classroom, a teacher has to try and know the ZPD balance. Let’s assume this isn’t a classroom where game-play and imagination is a common pedagogical method (there are classrooms where it is).  It’s hard enough to know where the ZPD balance is when you’re dealing with one child, let alone thirty or so. This is one reason I think parents are foolish to leave education to teachers – most of the time parents stand a better chance of designing for their kids ZPD than their teacher, but working with a teacher (not moaning about them) seems like a good idea. Not at all sure what social-barriers stop that, but they seem to [can't be bothered to research that, but I bet there's a gazillion papers].

Regardless of research, education is still made up of a series of objects that have been around for centuries (books, desks, teacher, rules, light, sound, text, other people). More recently computers and LIMITED parts of the Internet. Mobile Phones, Video-Game Systems are all way too new to even be contemplated as at the outset, we design around the teacher’s willingness and ability to do (anything) and then the student ability to respond appropriately within some fairly rigid boundaries of content and outcomes. The belief is that games and phones are not efficient or useful to teachers, so we ban, ignore or kick them into ‘endless discussion world’.

There are infinite variables in a classroom, therefore it’s unrealistic to say that you can gamify it. Those people are barking-mad, like their cousins who think more people on Twitter will create deeper knowledge or that a human teacher can zone in on individual kid ZDP reliably.

Teacher’s who set out to use technology, have a social, moral and professional responsibility to ensure they make these variables  controllable – as the quality of  control has a direct relationship to the quality of teaching (see point 5). When teachers remove things that make learning un-fun, as game designers remove un-fun things from games (tedious walking around or waiting for action to happen) – then you are in a position to start step 1 on Csikszentmihalyi’s list. If the teachers skills are limited to Microsoft Office, email and Googling then … blah.

In the list below, the first three things to me are essential skills of teachers. It should not all take place inside a computer, but to me if they use technology well they’ll get to step 4 most of the time. Compare that to teachers who endlessly fight for control – the classroom behavior management stuff. I think, in fact I know, that steps 1-3 largely determine the rest, so behavior is designed into the agenda, as a positive force for engagement. That doesn’t mean sitting up nicely, facing the front or raising your hand to be asked a question.

In summary, Flow has seven traits and I’ve sketch out how I see these things relating to eLearning design.

1. A challenging Activity That Requires Skills (requires teacher imagination)
2. The Merging of Action and Awareness (requires technology integration and innovation)
3. Clear Goals and Feedback (requires understanding of what quality feedback is and how to give it)
4. Concentration on the Task at Hand (requires kids to operate in virtual/physical space they feel secure in)
5. The Paradox of Control (requires teachers to become moderators/facilitators – play-makers)
6. The loss of Self-Consciousness (requires kids to trust teachers and visa versa)
7. The Transformation of Time (requires abandoning the 9-3 time-table, and allow kids to try 24/7)

So when your kid isn’t listening, transfixed on what they are doing – it’s because they are, theoretically and arguably in this flow. Of course there are those that say this is rubbish, games are a waste of time, will rot your brain or make you a violent anti-social loner.

Ask them then, how they could, given infinite resources that cannot be considered a ‘game’ , achieve these seven traits for 8 hours straight in one person. Then perhaps ask them how they can do it with half a million. If it’s rubbish, then games would not hold our attention as they do in my view – and this is important because when it comes to eLearning, the feedback is often so dismal, especially in Distance Education, that I seriously doubt the convener, teacher or tutor could pull of ZPD let alone flow.

Massively Minecraft – Eco Award, unpacked.

Maybe I was too quick in my last post about how we’re designing our game-world. I probably lacked detail (again). So here’s an example – in a sort of school like – presentation of how our adventures work. Kids choose these things, we don’t mandate them at all. This one’s about the environment, and here is a really brief sketch of how it works. You have to imagine that this mission is something the kid is curious and has chosen to do from a really simple description. If you like we use a kind of elevator pitch to get their attention. They are rewarded in the game for their work – there is no pass/fail or score. The kid will usually go off and make something – and ask questions. We look for chances to discuss these things, but we don’t interrogate the kids along the way, and accept that the rhythm is set by the kids, not us. Ultimately they know that in order to get the award, they will have to satisfy the evaluation in the game and in the guild.

Again, this is just an example! – it’s not at all trying to explain how this is facilitated and led in the game other than to say, the is never any direct instruction or lectures – it all happens though play and feedback. For parents, the invlovement comes though helping answer their kid’s questions and perhaps to show them or talk to them about these issues – it’s sort of opportunity driven (gamers will get what I mean). For example, a new report might come on and they want to talk about it or perhaps Dad points out rubbish left on the kerbside. When parents are aware of what kids are doing in the game, they are far more likely to discuss these things – using their own story, examples and particular style of teaching their kids. Parents are teachers too, and do a pretty good job when they are actually aware of what their kids are learning/curious about.

Think of this as a kind of invisible frame, it’s up to the moderator to show that they kids can do this – and to do that they also have to know the kid. I’m avoiding writing swathes on this – suffice to say – it’s not teaching as we might imagine from our Tyler-ist heritage and belief. This is the world of Notch.

The Eco-Builders Award

Importance: The world is made of natural and man made materials, some materials are less environmentally friendly than others.

Emotional Engagement: The world is easily polluted with man made rubbish, and man likes to use natural materials to make things that become this rubbish.

Binary Opposites: A world that we can/cannot live in

Content: Green groups, youtube videos, news, newspapers, the world outside our door.

Shaping: What happens when we can’t get access to man made products? Can we still live?

[possible ideas for parents/teachers as discussion raisers]

Putting all our waste in a bin, keeping a log.
Counting up the natural materials in our home.
Talking about something on the news
Watching a video documentary
Imagining a world where only natural/sustainable items are allowed
Building something that we can talk about.

Conclusion: What is the best way of showing we know how to create a world that is sustainable for us and other life. What is the compromise – what do we have to give up, have to acquire, what will be gain – what will we lose?

Evaluation: How do we know we understand the problem – how can we show we’ve grasped it’s importance, what content is useful to help us learn it – what content wasn’t useful. How does the thing you make/show/talk about/describe/play-with show this?

Imagine the opposite – then play Minecraft with us

Think about the classic fairy tale, what lies below the surface? What is Hansel and Gretel about?

It’s about security/fear.

In fact most fairy tales are about binary opposites – appealing to the imagination to process the meaning behind the language.  The language of the text, long with illustrations isn’t as powerful as a child’s ability to create memorable mental images and to learn what lies beneath the text that makes them powerful. In short, it doesn’t matter if you add a spoon full of technological sugar, unless you also start to appreciate that language tools are not simply an evolution of typewriter to word processor to blog to Twitter – and if you’re in any doubt, go and read some of Judy’s posts on the Information Abyss or anything Jude’s added to her library recently. More people on Twitter doing the same thing does not make it better – nor does it make anyone more deeply engaged with learning.

Massively Minecraft is designed to draw out these binary opposites though play, as we recognise that kids at 4-16 are not particularly interested in being critical thinkers, but find it more productive to be abstract thinkers – as that’s how their brain likes to learn. It doesn’t mean books and film is excluded from their in-take – and it’s brain-missing to say that as they are being allowed (told) to write information in a wiki, it is somehow better than not using a wiki. They don’t need to be connected via Twitter, they need to be connected by shared meaning is spaces that provide vivid opportunity to explore and make meaning. When we get that wrong – it’s called Facebook bullying – and education isn’t devoid of blame for the consequences that are clearly harrowing at times. I realise my argument runs against the grain and trend – and so I’ll never sell a million copies of a PLN book, but that doesn’t mean these people are right. They are just persuasive (for now) as there is a willing audience, who for the most part, don’t play games.

The most obvious binary opposite in Minecraft (like many games ) is survive/perish mechanic. There are numerous ways the game does that using Zombies, Apples, Pork, Creepers, Lava, Water etc., These are simple mechanics that the kids learn to minimize quickly, so that they can get on with more important business – imagination. In that regard, Minecraft isn’t compelling because of it’s in game rewards or combat, because you can make models of the Great Wall of China. It’s because it allows kids to explore mental images and articulate them in personal ways – with others, in a feedback look that Hattie would be proud of.

Over the last eight months, Massively Minecraft has evolved to almost 200 adventurous imagineers – not least due to the tireless dedication of Jo Kay towards building a safe-game that is rock solid reliable and customised to deliver what I’m talking about – and being a much loved and epic play-maker.

We put binary opposites to work in our game – it’s never about right/wrong or collecting n objects to level up. Its always about mystery, irony, jokes, arguments and other things that are generally not seen as an efficient way to process learning outcomes. We  target kids’ natural attraction to imagination, play and binary opposites to make our quest lines (inc. digital citizenship) imaginatively engaging. Kids always create (and see) something more wonderful in the task than the task itself. And if they choose not to, then that’s fine too. They come back when they are ready. And they come back – almost 200 kids, from around the world, 24/7.

It’s crucial for kids to rule their world, to design their own learning and build thier own social-rules – if they are to use their binary opposite skills to work out how society and culture works. – me.

Parents have no issue with binary opposites when they they let kids read books or watch movies. For example, despair and hope, fear and release, resentments, revolt and all reflected in the daily experience of playing the game. There are fairly tales in the school library, but if you try to put one on a computer, prepare for the bleating.

Many teachers have asked me about getting Minecraft around the school-filter. Firstly, the idea that games are un-educational is ignorant at best. Anyone filtering out games needs to justify their actions. In particular explaining exactly how gossip, fantasy, taking roles, creating imaginary worlds, making social-contractual arrangements or just having a good time is some how less educational than what is happening on computer screens in the ‘game-banned-classroom’.

Games have no new case to make. Vygotsky (who educators do hark on about) argues that in play, kids function beyond their average abilities and that this experimental situation allows them to explore the rules of their society and culture (1978). Anyone not had this on their pre-teacher reading list? – if so, what happened to play?

“Shrink not from new experience; but sailing still against the setting sun” – Dante’s Inferno

10 second game: Here’s a fairly tale image from a brilliant game called Trine 2. (Mac and PC). Combine this image with that single line of classic writing and imagine the story it creates?

If you are not a game player – that is about as near to explaining the experience, feeling and emotion of game-play as I can can reasonably get. Everyone can play – but not everyone know how to put imagination to work. Research show adults don’t use binary opposites to learn, we sort of fall out of the habit in written language cultures. Go figure.

Arguing for games is arguing for imaginative learning – and that’s what Massively Minecraft is seeking to do.

Ruling games out of a kids learning means they are likely to have an unimaginative education – where they can’t take on roles, instead we bleat on about content, time and curriculum … whereas every topic in the curriculum can be conceived in such as way that kids have roles to play, and explore any topic with greater intensity and engagement. The question for game-haters is how exactly do you argue against decades, if not thousands of years of clear research AND the phenomenal rise of gaming in the home and society?. Games have little to prove now or at any time previous … they have always been a great way to learn and to teach.

For those interested in adopting games in the classroom, we designed Massively Minecraft to do just that – and at the same time ding the digital-skills for almost zero additional effort.

Play or don’t play – it’s 2012 and we’re expanding … (love to all our friends and supporters) …

Massively Imagineering Minecraft

Last post for the year, so it seems fitting it should be about moving on. Next year, I’m over the moon to know that Massively Minecraft will be put to further work in education. Six months ago we could only imagine its success.

I’d like to quickly thank everyone who’s supported us (and the kids next year). It has a huge impact on them and us.

Merry Christmas

Positives of being an Aspi

9 minutes of some really good points, especially about friendships, focus and creativity. Powered by imagination, not language.