School is a game. It's just not a terribly well-designed game

Love is Respect - Grace's Diary is Life. Love. Game Design Challenge's winner

I just payed the flash game Grace's Diary that won the prize of the Life.Love.game contest. The third annual Life. Love. Game Design Challenge, is a flash design contest for the creation of games that deals with dating violence without using any violence in the game. Grace's Diary is more of a simple interactive story about helping Grace and her friend Natalie while learning the danger signs of Teen Dating Violence. In my opinion it could be less textual and more interactive but it can work as a good example of a creative way to speak about inconvenient truths to children and teens in a straightforward yet soothing way. It's a great contest for a great cause. Don't forget to check the other games as well http://www.jenniferann.org/2010-games.htm

The Psychology of Games

"Why do gamers do what they do? Why do those designing games do what they do?Why do those marketing and selling games do what they do?"
These are some of the questions that http://www.psychologyofgames.com blog is trying to address in a very successful imho way... No serious gaming and game based learning here kids, but you will definitely enjoy the opinion/results of a serious researcher who is a actually a gamer. Even the comments were really insightful and provided links with books/papers I was not aware of.

I was actually looking for some new papers on emotion and gaming and the Decision Making Under Arousal  post was trying to tackle the unanswered question "why am I staying up late playing games when I know you have to work tomorrow?"... oh why?

Gaming to save the world

According to the amazing Jane McGonigal and her TED.com speech: Gaming can make a better world gamers are able to solve REAL WORLD problems one quest at a time.
It was fascinating to see how game designer and doc McGonigal believes that gamers because of their ingame abilities/qualities of urgent optimism, ability for social fabrication, blissful productivity and epic meaning (such as SAVING THE WORLD duuuh) are willing and able to solve real life problems such as famine,global conflict, poverty, financial crisis, educational inequality etc. as long as we present them as a game quest. Sounds crazy? then it might work...

ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2009 - Do they game on or what?

And as you'd have figured out by now, I'm at lovely Berlin (I just luv this city!!), ready to figure out whether this conference (15th International Conference on Technology Supported Learning and Training taking place at December 2 - 4, 2009 @Hotel InterContinental Berlin), is willing and able to do some gaming.
I have to tell you that this is a BiG conference and you have to move in the speed of light with your GPS On if you dont want to miss everything.
I am -finally- at the most relevant session called "Gaming, Informal Learning & MUVEs" and I just found out that the presentation by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen was canseled. Nevermind, moving forward... The house is not just full, there are actually people sitting on the floor! I hope this will be taken into account by the people who organized EDUCA to have only one gaming session to a 2day conference. We are growing in numbers, yes we do...

The panel is a really really happy one. Laughing and having fun (that is indeed a gamewise attitude huh!).
The extremely amusing chairperson (Euan Mackenzie, 3MRT Ltd, UK) hared with us that the guys who built Larry (meaning Al Lowe?!) were able to charge the FBI a huge amount of dollars in order to create a simulation/game in order to teach FBI agents how to interrogate "terrorists" and guess where they based the AI of the game.... yes sir the intelligence is Lary's intelligence... "Hey scum, my name is Larry; Larry Laffer and I will use my sweet manners to make you talk... you sexy terrorist you..."

However most of the audience are from corporate training background, same as the direction of the entire conference I might say. Plus Nintendo (did you know it was established at 1889?!) is here (Silja Gülicher) and she is going to speak about the Scottish Experience with Nintendo DS and this is just briliant because Scotland is a great place for GBL. And this study was all about collaboration, focus and motivation on behalf of the student and structure and design of the experience on behalf of the educator. It was also mentioned that students with difficulties were more benefited and that a new Nintendo DS project will begin in Bavaria in order to support learners with difficulties in mathematics.

The second speaker, Koen DePryck is from Antwerp and will give a presentation on gaming as a tool for changing attitudes and I am eager to see where this will lead us... Everyone involved in GBL realises in one point that its all about the attitude of the learner and the educator towards not only GBL, but towards the training/learning subject as well. While he presented his opinion on understanding the importance of the learner's attitude towards the subject and formating it through SeRiOuS Games - e.g. Re-Mission for cancer patients, people kept entering the room till there was no room left. He also mentioned "rapid game development" as a solution in order to add GBL to the educators' toolbox. I would add "rapid game development by the specialist" and involve the educator.


Last but not least he mentioned that it might be essential to create game like environments to the RL educational environment ("Assassin I - First in the theatres, now in a classroom near you..."). Hhowever I do agree, It seems that over the last years when I do role play in the classroom I have to create a digital game ambience if I want to involve the students especially more mature game-wise students.

Next speaker, Norbert Fritz will try to refer to Simulation, Digital Worlds and GBL (terms usually mixed up both in meaning and in overlapping boundaries). In his extremely fast presentation he was the only one to refer to usability factor apart from content/attitude issues when integrating learning in a gaming environment.

The last speaker was a lovely finish educator called Hannele Virtanen-Vaaranmaa, from Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, who discussed with us her experience in Second Life (@ Metropolia sl as hannele halostar) and how students can be benefited from virtual words. She mentioned how pedagogical content can be applied in a virtual world and she also reffered to the differend kind of studies that can occure in the virtual world. It was great to listen to a highly motivated educator who actually has a good VW experience.

Next day will be all about integrating Serious Gaming and Digital Storytteling in the educational experience of the students but I am quite worried that the presentations are going to have a much more corporate training content that I'd prefer.

-update: yes they did... even in a session regarding "Innovative and Creative Forms of Teaching" we got corporate training presentations by managers again... where are the teachers/educators in this conference? Probably in another session.. I really dont enjoy big conferences

However check this Serious Games Project called e-Vita Project

Küsse von Berlin

Nottingham UK - Interactive Technologies and Games: Education, Health and Disability 2009

On Tuesday after a hellish travel day (18 hours yahoo!) I was happy to participate at the Interactive Technologies and Games: Education, Health and Disability Conference in Nottingham, UK.
I dont recall mentioning it again but my field is GBL for users with intellectual disabilities, therefore you can imagine my joy participating in such a relevant conference. One of the organisers of the conference was Prof David Brown of Nottingham Trent University with whom we worked together during GOAL Net. Both Prof. Brown with his amazing users from Shepherd School and psychology prof. Penny Standen from Nottingham University inspired us through their presentations regarding GBL used as a tool in special education. Amongs the participants we had the oppotunity to listen about educational issues and researchers using gaming and accessible gaming while we learnt a lot about the usage of mobile gaming for educational and therapeutical issues. The usage of Wii and Wii mote was praised a lot as an accessible interesting medium/platform. At the same time there was a small but important excibition and apart from excibiting The Magic Potion I got to see a lot of important GBL software, products and platforms. I attach the program for future reference:


Interactive Technologies and Games: Education, Health and Disability
27th October 2009
Nottingham Trent University
8.30- 9:30 am Exhibition open and Registration
9.30- 9:40 am Introduction (Yvonne Barnett tbc)
9.40- 10.00 am TBC - Keynote Speech
ENGAGING LEARNERS USING GAMES AND GAMES TECHNOLOGY
10.00 am M Bates
Design for Learning: Exploring Serious Games-Design with Children
10:20 am S Bunce Collaboration and enquiry using Nintendo DS consoles
10.40 am V Butkute Didactic Approach to Mobile Games as Interactive Learning Tool
11.00 am D Bill Investigation into the way that computer games can be used to raise the standards in literacy
SERIOUS GAMES AND DISABILITIY
11:40 am A Jones Sheffield Youth Offending Mission Maker Programme
12.00 am G Long The enhancement of simulation based learning exercises through formalised reflection, focus groups and group presentation
12:20 pm K Moss Using Personal Response Systems for Effective Learning
12:40 pm E Etchemendy An e-health platform for elderly population: Butler System
SERIOUS GAMES FOR HEALTH AND REHABILITATION
2.00 pm D Brown Designing a Rehabilitation Interaction Device using Nintendo’s Wii Mote Controller for Upper Limb Stroke Rehabilitation
2:20 pm J Broeren Neuro-rehabilitation using multi-modal interaction
2:40 pm Z Butcher Do Interactive Computer Games Provide Sufficient Intensity to Increase Energy Expenditure and Contribute Towards Good Health and Children and Adults
3:20 pm M Griffiths Videogames as therapy: A Review of the Medical and Psychological Literature
3:40 pm D Hilton A virtual reality ward simulation for nurse education
4.00 pm M McNeill Desktop Augmented Reality for Upper Limb Stroke Rehabilitation
4.20 pm K van Isacker Practical applications of virtual environments and serious games for the education of people with disabilities and elderly people
B = Ballroom
EVALUATION AND APPLICATIONS OF Wii TECHNOLOGY
10.00 am S Battersby Investigating the Nintendo Wii as an Adaptive Platform for Assistive Human Interface Device Development
10:20 am C Camm An evaluation of the Wii Nunchuk as an alternative Assistive Device for people with intellectual and physical disabilities using switch controlled software
10.40 am K Gerlin Serious Game Design using Nintendo WiiMote: Motivating School Children to Improve Dental Hygiene
11.00 am C Langensiepen Use of Gesture Recognition to Control Household Devices for the Elderly

SERIOUS GAMES AND DISABILITIY
11:40 am D Brown Personalisation, Modding and location based services in serious games for people with disabilities
12.00 am C Lanyi Development of an Assistant Platform for Children with Intellectual Disabilities on Mobile Devices
12:20 pm James Lewis Development of a 3D visual impairment simulator using the Unreal Tournament 3 Engine (UT3)
12:40 pm Jacqui Lewis Including People with Disabilities in the design of serious games and virtual environments
2.00 pm M Wright The Use of Real Time BSL signing avatars to
beach BSL/English Bilingualism
2:20 pm J Sanchez Blind Children School Integration and Science
Learning Through Video Gaming
2:40 pm Maria Saridaki Digital Games in the Experience of Adult Users with Cognitive Disabilities in Greece: preliminary results and observations
3:20 pm S Schofield Using Binaural Sound Games to Help Teach Maths to Blind KS1 and KS2 Children
3:40 pm T Glover Collaborative technologies for interaction and learning in children on the autistic spectrum: the CoSPATIAL project
4.00 pm N Van Labeke Intrinsic Integration and the Design of Games for Auditory Perceptual Learning
4.20 pm L Evett A Mobile Accessible Touchscreen Interface

Games and Digital Storytelling - Once Upon a game...

Last July (aka 2009) I was happy to participate at the 7th Fairy Tales Festival, held in Kea, on «Tales of Love» , and it was enchanting! The program included fairy-tale narratives, musical-art events, art exhibitions, puppet shows, shadow theater, workshops for children and adults and the admission was free to the public.

Apart from that we got to present our educational fairygame called Magic Potion and organise a workshop for children at the beach regarding storytelling and games. But this time using the digital image as a motive for narration instead of vica versa. It seemed that the children were able to create collaboratively an entire new story based on the stills from the Magic Potion Game.
The Magic Potion was designed especially for users with mild mental disability and it is in greek. Check out our paper if you are into academia or you dont get bored easily, otherwise skip the next link:
Digital Game-Based Learning for Students with Mild Intellectual Disability: The EPINOISI Project
M.Saridaki, D.Gouscos, M.Meimaris

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0

Since that lovely day I keep thinking about storytelling fairytales and gaming. Where does the interactive storytelling ends and the gaming begins? educational impact and so on...
soooo today I came across a LovelyLovely fairy tale game called Gretel and Hansel (not hansel and gretel, grrls take over:-) which I'd love to share with you and I really feel that it is a very effective combination between storytelling and game.