‘Inanimate Alice’ tells the story of Alice, growing up in the early years of the 21st century. Written and directed by writer Kate Pullinger and digital artist Chris Joseph, this series of multimedia, interactive episodes uses a combination of text, sound, images, and games as Alice takes us on a journey through her life from the age of eight through to her twenties. Alice becomes a games animator; not just any animator, but a creator of characters for the most successful games company in the world.

And one character stands out: Brad, Alice’s only true friend in life. The ten episodes of ‘Inanimate Alice’ become increasingly interactive and game-like, reflecting Alice’s own developing skills as a game designer and animator. ‘Inanimate Alice’ is a study of human/computer relations in a world where having friends means never having to meet them.

I was contacted by Ian about this project recently - and I thought it worth passing on. He draws attention to episode 4: Hometown” (http://inanimatealice.com)in which Alice previews a software tool that she has created, called iStories. A supremely simple storytelling tool, iStories enables students and staff to choose photos, add words, music and sound effects and BOOM! you have your own interactive story in minutes. Check it out at http://www.iStori.es

I’d love to hear from any teachers how have the chance to try this with students.

I’ve just been taking a look at PowerUp, a free, 3D virtual world launched a few days ago by IBM. The game is aimed at educating teenagers about alternative energy sources and environmental conservation. It’s really quite engaging, and makes great use of a 3D games environment that merges the appeal of fantasy virtual worlds with the educational goal of building wind and watermills to save the world. Playing the game, students work together in teams to investigate the rich, 3D game environment and learn about the environmental disasters that threaten the game world and its inhabitants.

Players meet Expert Engineer characters and experience the great diversity of the field. Conversations with these experts and engaging interactive activities allow players to explore ways engineers design and build systems to harness renewable energy sources as alternatives to burning fossil fuels. Players take on the role of Engineers, working together designing and building energy solutions to save the world.

Despite the strong use of the gaming environment, Powerup has definitely been created with an educational intent - it comes with notes for parents and teachers, including a list of lesson plans, and also has a strong emphasis on internet safety. There is no requirement for users to input personal details that may let them be identified. In addition, PowerUp players use a phrase-based chat system to communicate with each other. There is no blank field into which another player can type a message and send it to the user, rather, throughout the game players can choose from a contextualized list of messages to send to other players. The list has been created by the game designers and includes only phrases that are necessary for cooperation and positive reinforcement between players.

Unfortunately for me it’s only available for PC - no Mac version available (yet?). Take a look at the intro video below for more…

I spent last week in Auckland interviewing teachers and students who have been a part of a pilot project using Mission Maker - a computer games authoring package from Immersive Education in the UK. During the interviews I had several conversations about the perceived value of games and gaming in education - all of which came back into focus when I read the following:

Games, for learners, are an invitation to interaction. Unfortunately, most classroom-based learning is not.

It came from George Seimen’s commentary on a Businessweek article titled The Name of the game is Work. The article begins with…

If you’re thinking that maybe you should hide the video game controller from your kids because they’re spending too much time in front of the TV or computer, don’t. What you think is slacking may just be preparing them to become productive members of the workforce when they get older. Their future offices are likely to be heavily digital???especially if they work remotely???and their work may resemble the online games that many now spend hours playing.

… and goes on to describe how several businesses are now experimenting with games as a part of what they do in areas such as recruiting new staff, improving communication between managers and their far-flung staff, and training employees at all levels.

All of this reminded me of the recent announcement about the trialing of the New Zealand’s first remote-controlled da Vinci surgery robot at Mercy-Ascot Hospital in Auckland. This state of the art piece of equipment allows surgeons to perform their surgery remotely, using a console that looks more like a computer game station. I heard a comment recently that the successful use of this equipment requires the same sorts of skills that are required for games playing - fine motor control, 3D spacial awareness etc, suggesting that games playing may well be a desired pre-requisite in the search for surgeons who will use the da Vinci robot!

For an in-depth explanation of the da Vinci surgery robot you might be interested to listen to a Radio New Zealand podcast from Louise Wallace interviewing Chris Hawke, one of two local doctors trained in its use.

Just received an email from my electricity supplier in Christchurch - telling me of an educational website they are sponsoring called ElectroCity. It’s worth checking out - reminds me a lot of the SimCity projects that I used to run with kids at school - dividing into groups to see who could create the most successful city, and using the experience to discuss issues such as taxes, transport, recreation, governance etc - and coming to understand the issues involved in designing and maintaining a city.

ElectroCity is very similar, although its focus is on teaching about about energy, sustainability and environmental management in New Zealand. I worked my way through the very well constructed tutorial an can see real potential in this being used as a virtual learning experience in the classroom.

There’s a resource area for teachers, a very helpful FAQ area, and some pretty impressive prizes being offered in two categories, one for schools and one for public contributions.

The game is designed to be played online - but something I found to be of interest is that there is an option to download a limited version of the game that runs on any computer and doesn’t need internet access, with two versions available, one for MacOSX and one for WindowsXP. (I haven’t had the chance to try these yet, so can’t vouch for what they’re like).

If I was back in a class again I’d certainly be looking at this as a useful learning resource - some notes from the website explain why:

ElectroCity is not a win or lose game. There are lots of different ways to play and you can set your class specific objectives. For example, if you wish to try a green approach, a win might be considered any city with 50,000 people and an A rating in the environment category. Or you might focus on economics and get the kids to go for the most money.

ElectroCity is designed to be flexible, so you can use it as you wish. A whole module that deals with energy, the environment, tourism and growth could be centred around the game, mixing formal lessons with fun interactive game play. You could return to the game again and again over several weeks and compare how the kids played at the beginning with how they play at the end, putting their new knowledge into practical use and getting the kids to assess what they’ve learnt to help them make better decisions in the game.

Last year sometime I wrote about an application from called Alice which I considered to be a useful way of introducing students to the object oriented games development environment. This morning I came across Scratch, from MIT which provides a similar sort of “drag and drop” creative environment - with some extra features that really appeal to me. The website explains:

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

There’s a useful introductory video available on the site that provides a pretty good overview of how it works:

I accessed the free download and managed to get some animations up and running fairly quickly. For those keen to develop further, there are several tutorials available, plus loads of examples of projects created by others that you can view and unpack to see how they’ve created them.

The developers say that Scratch has been develped with educators in mind, and provide loads of information and resources on their education page to help you understand this.

It’s remarkably easy to set up your own account, and create an online space to be able to upload your animations etc into your own gallery for sharing with others. I’d be interested in seeing examples of Scratch being used by students!

When I was teaching I found the use of simulation activities among the most effective ways of engaging students in their learning. In those days I relied on activities that involved lots of paper, and instructions in envelopes etc. Nowadays you can find some really great simulation activities online - such as the simulation games created by World Vision , and available free for teachers and students.

There are five excellent activities listed on the WV simulation games page - I’ve registered and had a dabble with Eliminate - Child labour (experiencing life as a social worker with the goal to eliminate child labour in a community) , and with Frontline (Set in a conflict zone, teams face decisions that save lives and assist those impacted by conflict.)

I’m really impressed with the quality of these activities - both in terms of the way the activities themselves are devised and structured, and in terms of the interface. There’s quite a bit of reading involved - but hey, in a classroom group situation that becomes part of the activitiy, reading together to decode the instructions etc. Those looking for a Play Station or X-Box experience will be disappointed - but let them. These simulations are engaging in different ways. They’re especially useful for developing critical thinking, and exploring ideas and concepts at a deeper level than a superficial read of a magazine or text book article - especially when engaged in as a part of a classroom group activity. Like all good simulations - they’re intended to teach not through the imparting of lots of information, but through the understandings developed through the process of participation, problem solving and decision making.

Well done World Vision for making these available for use on our classrooms - from the comments boxes on the web page it would appear that there are many people making good use of them and finding value in using them.

Here’s a cool video clip that I came across on Google Video today. The topic is video games in education - it’s 23 minutes long, and is produced by the Orange County District Office of Education in the US. It provides a pretty good overview for educators who haven’t been exposed to thinking about the use of video games in education, or for those who want to understand more about the potential for learning of these games. There are some useful comments in the video by acknowledged experts in the field, including Dr James Gee and Dr Henry Jenkins, Clarke Aldridge & others.

We’ve added a new logo on the right hand side of the CORE website -titled CORE’s Ten Trends for 2007

Clicking on this logo will take you to a list of ten trends that we’ve identified as being particularly important in 2007. The aim is to create some dialogue around some of the things that are happening in the NZ context regarding the use of ICT in education. The emphasis is on looking at the bigger picture, rather than the things absorb our time every day at the “coal face”.

I will be using these ten trends as the focus of my Spotlight at the Learning@School conference this week, and would love to see plenty of contributions being made in the comments section at the end of each “Trend”.

Each month or so the CORE staff are going to expand one of the themes with further links and references to prompt a deeper level of participation and discussion. We’re sure to have missed some that people think are important, or included some that others think aren’t - all of which should make the discussion fuller and richer!

Following up on the discussions that have been taking place around NZ after Lisa Galareau’s keynote at the ULearn conference, here’s an interesting report from FutureLab titled Teaching with Games. it’s the result of a one-year project supported by Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Take-Two and ISFE.

The study was designed to offer a broad overview of teachers’ and students’ use of and attitudes towards commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) computer games in schools. It’s aims were to:

1. identify the factors that would impact the use of these entertainment games in school

2. describe the processes by which teachers plan and implement games-based learning in existing curricular contexts
3. provide recommendations for future games-based learning approaches in schools for teachers, developers and policy makers.

The report is an excellent read, (either online or by downloading the PDF version). There’s an emphasis throughout on there being a great deal of potential for learning in the use of games in classrooms, but that this potential will only be realised when teachers,school leaders and games developers understand and take notice of the range of factors identified in this report.

Of the key findings from the project, a couple that caught my eye were:

• Using games in a meaningful way within lessons depended far more on the effective use of existing teaching skills than it did on the development of any new, game-related skills. Far from being sidelined, teachers were required to take a central role in scaffolding and supporting students’ learning through games.

• Where previous studies have suggested that games need to offer a fully accurate underlying model to be of benefit for formal education, this study suggests that for the game to be of benefit to teachers, it need only be accurate to a certain degree: there may be wider inaccuracies within the game model, but these do not necessarily preclude the game from being used meaningfully in a lesson.

Now there’s some thing to challenge some of the assumptions and pre-conceived ideas about games and gaming that I’ve seen and herd expressed recently!

(Note: Lisa Galarneau’s talk at ULearn is available here - requires registration)

Lisa Galarneau’s presentation at the ULearn conference has certainly stirred up a lot of conversation about gaming in education - ranging from those who are inspired and enthusiastic to those who don’t see any place for computer games in the classroom. A lot of this is fuelled, of course, bu the sort of statement that was made in the TV3 news item about Lisa’s talk where the intro claimed that “games may be the future of education”.

Such extravagant claims are, or course, intended to stir imaginations and evoke response - all of which is constructive as we seek to address questions about the future of schooling in a digital and networked age. I have three children still at school, and while I would not like to think that their future will consist of sitting all day, every day in front of a computer games console, I am continually intrigued by the ways in which their engagement with digital technologies and participation in the online world is contributing significantly to their disposition as learners - both in terms of how they learn and what they learn - as well as with whom they learn.

In response to what I see as an undercurrent of negativity and ultra-conservatism among some at this conference, I thought I’d record why I am a supporter of the use (and ongoing research into use) of games, gaming and game development in education. Here are my three main reasons:

1. Games are engaging - there is little doubt that games engage learners. As educators we are all interested in making learning engaging, relevant, delightful etc. There is much to learn from the whole area of games development that might inform the nature of learning activity that occurs in classrooms in the future. We need researchers like Lisa and others to lead us in this thinking - and we need to be engaging in conversations about how this can inform the nature of what happens in our schools and classrooms.

2. Games can effectively mediate experiences and events we’ve long recognised the advantages of direct, purposeful experiences in educaiton - theorists such as John Dewey and Edgar Dale have provided excellent frameworks to support this. There are some really useful initiatives going on at present to explore how the exisiting gaming engines may be used to provide pedagogically sound, educationally-oriented experiences for learners. Second life is a good example of an open, simulated environment that is being used by some educators, while simulations such as Darfur is Dying provide a more focused experience based on specified learning outcomes.
3. Game development is effective for teaching important skills - Games in education needn’t be focused only on playing games. I believe there is a lot to be gained from providing students with the tools and abilities to create, construct and contribute to their own games. Using such tools students have the opportunity to develop and use skills that are going to be in demand in a digital world - including programming skills, graphical and design skills, collaborative skills etc. There is an increasing focus on the development of games that can be modified by the user (MODs) which fits this category also.

I could elaborate more on these ideas I’m sure, but for now this summarises where I’m coming from. I think we ignore the potential impact of games in education at our peril - and we simply can’t wait for our politicians and policy makers to complete their “risk mitigation” on this - those who are already using, playing, making and modifying games with their students. We need to capture these experiences, share them and learn from them and eachother (and that includes the students). There’s already a plethora of information available to us to support what is happening in this area, so let’s just do it.