Investigating the implications of aging in the era of technology, Karaoke Ice (2004-2007) is a mobile social space and database bringing people together through icy treats and song. In collaboration with Katie Salen and Marina Zurkow.
Commissioned by ZeroOne San Jose and the Inter-Society for Electronic Arts; sponsored in Los Angeles by LACE.
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 | The Big Urban Game was commissioned by the Design Institute of the University of Minnesota as a part of its Twin Cities Design Celebration, with the goal of encouraging the residents of Minneapolis and St. Paul a way to see their surroundings in a whole new way, and to think about the design of urban space. The game is a race between three teams, each of which is attempting to move a 25-foot high inflatable game piece through a series of Twin Cities’ checkpoints in the shortest amount of time. The game is played by the residents of the Twin Cities. Players begin by joining one of the three teams: red, yellow, or blue. Each day, local newspapers show the current locations of the three inflatable pieces along with two possible routes to each piece’s next checkpoint. Players choose the route that they feel is the fastest, and either call the BUG 800 number or vote on-line for their favorite. Each evening, a team of volunteer movers carries the pieces through the city, following the route that received the most votes. The time it takes to travel the route is recorded and added to that team’s total time. During the days of the race, the piece stands as a landmark at its current location, and becomes a center for community activity. Players can travel to the piece’s location and roll a giant set of dice. The totals generated by the dice rolling of each team are compared, and the team with the highest total gets a head-start in that evening’s run. On the last day of the game, all three pieces race towards the final checkpoint: Lake Street Bridge. Each team’s total time is calculated, and the team with the lowest cumulative time is declared the winner. | |
Why Games & Learning
The meaning of knowing today has shifted from being able to recall and repeat information to being able to find it, evaluate it and use it compellingly at the right time and in the right context.
Education in the early part of the twentieth century tended to focus on the acquisition of basic skills and content knowledge, like reading, writing, calculation, history or science. Many experts believe that success in the twenty-first century depends on education that treats higher order skills, like the ability to think, solve complex problems or interact critically through language and media.
Games naturally support this form of education. They are designed to create a compelling complex problem space or world, which players come to understand through self-directed exploration. They are scaffolded to deliver just-in-time learning and to use data to help players understand how they are doing, what they need to work on and where to go next. Games create a compelling need to know, a need to ask, examine, assimilate and master certain skills and content areas. Some experts argue that games are, first and foremost, learning systems, and that this accounts for the sense of engagement and entertainment players experience.
There are other attributes of games that facilitate learning. One of these is the state of being known as play. Much of the activity of play consists in failing to reach the goal established by a game’s rules. And yet players rarely experience this failure as an obstacle to trying again and again, as they work toward mastery. There is something in play that gives players permission to take risks considered outlandish or impossible in “real life.” There is something in play that activates the tenacity and persistence required for effective learning.
There are three key moments in game play with important implications for learning. The first is when a would-be player approaches a game and expresses a wish to participate: “Can I try? Can I join in?” The second moment comes when a player asks, “Can I save it?” In other words, “I’m deeply invested in this experience, which has value and meaning, and I’d like to pick up where I left off.” The third moment comes when a player attains a level of mastery and offers advice to a novice: “Want me to show you how?” A corollary to this moment occurs in the community of practice that arises around games, when one player asks another, “How did you do that? Will you teach me?”
We are happy to observe the public discourse around games and learning moving beyond the polemics which have tended to cast digital games―on the one hand―as a scourge on civil society and―on the other hand―as a Holy Grail in the quest to keep kids in school and on track. Games are already widely used by teachers, parents, schools and other institutions with an interest in learning. They function as doorways into content areas, introductions into specific skill sets and/or nodes in larger knowledge networks. In fact, games and learning have enjoyed an association that predates digital technology by thousands of years. That’s why when we discuss the properties of games, we mean to refer to games of all types: board games, physical games, puzzle games, online games, console games, mobile games, etc.
The Institute is most interested in games as complex eco-systems extending beyond the game space to involve networks of people in a variety of roles and rich interactions. Learning represents just one activity within this larger, highly engaging system.
Please be in touch with any questions you may have regarding games and learning.
Education in the early part of the twentieth century tended to focus on the acquisition of basic skills and content knowledge, like reading, writing, calculation, history or science. Many experts believe that success in the twenty-first century depends on education that treats higher order skills, like the ability to think, solve complex problems or interact critically through language and media.
Games naturally support this form of education. They are designed to create a compelling complex problem space or world, which players come to understand through self-directed exploration. They are scaffolded to deliver just-in-time learning and to use data to help players understand how they are doing, what they need to work on and where to go next. Games create a compelling need to know, a need to ask, examine, assimilate and master certain skills and content areas. Some experts argue that games are, first and foremost, learning systems, and that this accounts for the sense of engagement and entertainment players experience.
There are other attributes of games that facilitate learning. One of these is the state of being known as play. Much of the activity of play consists in failing to reach the goal established by a game’s rules. And yet players rarely experience this failure as an obstacle to trying again and again, as they work toward mastery. There is something in play that gives players permission to take risks considered outlandish or impossible in “real life.” There is something in play that activates the tenacity and persistence required for effective learning.
There are three key moments in game play with important implications for learning. The first is when a would-be player approaches a game and expresses a wish to participate: “Can I try? Can I join in?” The second moment comes when a player asks, “Can I save it?” In other words, “I’m deeply invested in this experience, which has value and meaning, and I’d like to pick up where I left off.” The third moment comes when a player attains a level of mastery and offers advice to a novice: “Want me to show you how?” A corollary to this moment occurs in the community of practice that arises around games, when one player asks another, “How did you do that? Will you teach me?”
We are happy to observe the public discourse around games and learning moving beyond the polemics which have tended to cast digital games―on the one hand―as a scourge on civil society and―on the other hand―as a Holy Grail in the quest to keep kids in school and on track. Games are already widely used by teachers, parents, schools and other institutions with an interest in learning. They function as doorways into content areas, introductions into specific skill sets and/or nodes in larger knowledge networks. In fact, games and learning have enjoyed an association that predates digital technology by thousands of years. That’s why when we discuss the properties of games, we mean to refer to games of all types: board games, physical games, puzzle games, online games, console games, mobile games, etc.
The Institute is most interested in games as complex eco-systems extending beyond the game space to involve networks of people in a variety of roles and rich interactions. Learning represents just one activity within this larger, highly engaging system.
Please be in touch with any questions you may have regarding games and learning.
History of Games & Learning
Games and learning enjoy an association that predates digital technology by thousands of years.
Members of Rhode Island’s volunteer played American Kriegsspiel following the U.S. Civil War. And the pioneering work of Friedrich Froebel―which led to the creation of kindergarten in Germany in the early nineteenth century―was premised on the integration of learning through games and play. The game of chess was used in the Middle Ages and Renaissance to teach noblemen the strategies of war. And there are some scholars who argue that the methods of dialogue and learning Plato ascribed to Socrates functioned through a kind of verbal play.
Not until the mid twentieth century did the association between games and learning begin to capture the public imagination. The prominent Dutch historian, Johan Huizinga, published his landmark study Homo Ludens or Playing Man, which posited play as a primary, necessary activity in the generation of cultures. The Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, connected the development of moral judgement in children to their ability to understand rules in a game. And two analysts at the newly formed RAND Corporation, A.M. Mood and R.D. Specht, released their influential paper, “Gaming as a Technique of Analysis.” In it they observed: “A virtue of gaming that is sometimes overlooked by those seeking grander goals is its unparalleled advantages in training and educational programs. A game can easily be made fascinating enough to put over the dullest facts. To sit down and play through a game is to be convinced as by no argument, however persuasively presented.”
Thanks to the advent of personal computing, the 1980s saw the evolution and commercialization of a new kind of learning game. These games drew from video arcade and console game methods, incorporating narrative and visual elements from popular culture, and they targeted primarily elementary-aged children. Companies like the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation (MECC), the Learning Company, McCormick and Davidson and Associates were early pioneers, producing titles like Oregon Trail, Reader Rabbit, Number Munchers and Math Blaster.
The 1990s saw the emergence of a mass market for family-oriented software. The development of digital learning games consolidated under Mattel and Cendant. Distribution centralized through super-stores like CompUSA and Toys R Us. And, in general, the research-oriented ethos of early “edutainment” gave way to a more strictly business orientation. Also, multi-media games began to emerge showcasing popular licensed characters like Barbie, Mickey Mouse and Yoda.
Another category of digital learning game began to emerge as well, in opposition to the skill-and-drill orientation of early computer-based instruction. It focused instead on providing kids with tools for tinkering, authoring and construction. Seymour Papert was an early proponent of this approach in his book Mindstorms and through the programming language he developed, called Logo. Simulation games like SimCity or Droidworks grew out of this tradition.
Members of Rhode Island’s volunteer played American Kriegsspiel following the U.S. Civil War. And the pioneering work of Friedrich Froebel―which led to the creation of kindergarten in Germany in the early nineteenth century―was premised on the integration of learning through games and play. The game of chess was used in the Middle Ages and Renaissance to teach noblemen the strategies of war. And there are some scholars who argue that the methods of dialogue and learning Plato ascribed to Socrates functioned through a kind of verbal play.
Not until the mid twentieth century did the association between games and learning begin to capture the public imagination. The prominent Dutch historian, Johan Huizinga, published his landmark study Homo Ludens or Playing Man, which posited play as a primary, necessary activity in the generation of cultures. The Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, connected the development of moral judgement in children to their ability to understand rules in a game. And two analysts at the newly formed RAND Corporation, A.M. Mood and R.D. Specht, released their influential paper, “Gaming as a Technique of Analysis.” In it they observed: “A virtue of gaming that is sometimes overlooked by those seeking grander goals is its unparalleled advantages in training and educational programs. A game can easily be made fascinating enough to put over the dullest facts. To sit down and play through a game is to be convinced as by no argument, however persuasively presented.”
Thanks to the advent of personal computing, the 1980s saw the evolution and commercialization of a new kind of learning game. These games drew from video arcade and console game methods, incorporating narrative and visual elements from popular culture, and they targeted primarily elementary-aged children. Companies like the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation (MECC), the Learning Company, McCormick and Davidson and Associates were early pioneers, producing titles like Oregon Trail, Reader Rabbit, Number Munchers and Math Blaster.
The 1990s saw the emergence of a mass market for family-oriented software. The development of digital learning games consolidated under Mattel and Cendant. Distribution centralized through super-stores like CompUSA and Toys R Us. And, in general, the research-oriented ethos of early “edutainment” gave way to a more strictly business orientation. Also, multi-media games began to emerge showcasing popular licensed characters like Barbie, Mickey Mouse and Yoda.
Another category of digital learning game began to emerge as well, in opposition to the skill-and-drill orientation of early computer-based instruction. It focused instead on providing kids with tools for tinkering, authoring and construction. Seymour Papert was an early proponent of this approach in his book Mindstorms and through the programming language he developed, called Logo. Simulation games like SimCity or Droidworks grew out of this tradition.
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