Welcome to the seminar “Games as medium”…

Hello Sanna in Helsinki and Ville in Copenhagen, welcome to our blog!

I will try to summarise your (project) interests in one sentence, please correct and differentiate this first impression if necessary…:

  • Sanna’s project ideas deal with social media as environment for a learning game, with a focus on cultural signification processes, e.g. the acquisition of (foreign) language and culture.
  • Ville’s project interest is focused on augmented reality games, touching concepts of ubiqitous/mobile/location based computing,  multimodal interfaces and pervasive gaming.
  • Both of you are interested in learning theories in general, as well as their connection to games.

Seminar organisation
This course will be project-oriented: goals are an introduction and conceptual application to game design as medium design, with the topic or theme for a conceptual game / a game concept free to choose. The applied theories and the project should touch your area of interest, at best these should be (re)usable for your further studies, your job or your master’s thesis.

Project work / dates
There is no decisive deadline for the project, though April 2013 would be fine.

Communications
We will meet 3-4 times via Adobe Connect, or alternatively via Skype for organisational issues, group discussions and project presentations.
Asynchronous communication, the mainstay of this seminar, will take place via this blog, i.e. for project documentation, thoughts, ideas etc. and eMail for questions, clarifications, notifications etc.
As an example for a seminar blog see “Shaping Media: Pedagogical Media Theory”.
The next two videochat-meetings will be Nov. 12th, 20:00-21:30, and Dec. 3rd, 20:00-21:30.

Literature – recommendations

  • Gregory Bateson (1972), “The logical categories of learning and Communications.” (learning)
  • Roger Caillois (1958), “Man, Play and Games.” (playing & games)
  • Bunchball (2010), “Gamification 101.” (social gaming (with a grain of salt))
  • Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen (2005), “Beyond Edutainment.” (learning & games)
  • Heinz von Foerster (2003), “Ethics and second order cybernetics*”, paragraph “Metaphysics.”
  • Johan Huizinga (1938), “Homo Ludens.” (playing & games)
  • Eric Klopfer (2008), “Augmented Learning. Research and Design of Mobile Educational Games.” (augmented reality/mobile/location based games)
  • Jane McGonigal (2003), “This is not a Game.” (social gaming)
  • Markus Montola et al. (2010), “Pervasive Games.” (pervasive gaming)
  • Kurt Squire (2005), “Game Based Learning”, selected pages (learning & games)

A quick overview on well-known learning theories / paradigms and their transfer to instructional design can be found here:

From the same site a quick overview on the ARCS motivational model:

Interestingly, games – the non-learning-kind – can be classified quite well by learning theories; and they usually follow motivational design principles.

Examples

Do you know some?
Post’ and comment on them as blog entries!

Some first questions

  • What is “social media”? What are its specific strengths and weaknesses, what selection of these are the most important ones for you? What kind of learning and gaming could be supported or enabled especially well within it, and how? What do you wish for?
  • What is “augmented reality”? How and with what can reality be augmented? What kind of learning and gaming could be supported or enabled especially well within it, and how? What do you wish for?
  • Can you connect the basic gaming principles of your favorite game(s) to learning paradigms/taxonomies?

What do you wish for?

Avatar photo

About Wey

My name's Wey-Han Tan, I graduated 2007 as Diplompädagoge (educational scientist) in Hamburg, and 2009 as M.A. in ePedagogy Design. Currently I work at the project "Universitätskolleg" as scientific assistant at the Faculty for Educational Sciences, Psychology and Human Movement at the University of Hamburg. My research interests are game based learning, second order gaming, media theory and (radical) constructivist approaches. I like pen-and-paper-roleplaying, especially in contemporary horror settings like "KULT" or "Call of Cthulhu".
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3 Responses to Welcome to the seminar “Games as medium”…

  1. Ville says:

    My interests are in thinking about the future gaming/edugaming in the era when Augmenter Reality (AR) technology is ready. The technology exist but the how it can be viewed is still in progress. Now AR can be tested with smartphones or iPad, but the possible breakthrough will be in the eyewear, if it can be good enough. It should be wireless too so this might take years 🙂

    1st example:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNu4CluFOcw
    Sanna-Kaisa, google “Augmented Reality” in Youtube to see more examples..

    There are board games, some concept(not real) videos like this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGsfDDxhFN0&feature=related

    Instead of printed marker, you could use your iPad:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i1NYVaYv8g

    What is out there now?
    Google is planning to do glasses, then there are Vuzix glasses (pricey, ugly, but work)
    http://www.vuzix.com/consumer/products_wrap_1200.html

  2. sanna says:

    Hey, at last I found it in an article about games news, which I mentioned at some point:
    http://newsgames.gatech.edu/index.php
      http://www.newsgaming.com/faq.htm

    and also in finnish (Ville, if you are interested) http://www.journalistiliitto.fi/journalisti/lehti/2012/13/artikkelit/pelaa-uutinen/

    Regards, Sanna-Kaisa

  3. sanna says:

    Hi, I found this too, at last: I mentioned this when talking about augmented reality game:
    Shared dramaturgy utilizes a Nordic project that was carried out in the autumn of 2012, “concept combines the real world, the Internet and television”:

    https://www.facebook.com/thespiral.eu
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msImSvsrQkI

    Finland´s representative from YLE: “The Spiral is a new, experimental production, created a number of European media company’s co-operation. Thriller Series, The Spiral, starts from the Copenhagen. An artistic community and its charismatic leader are developing a plan to steal the six world-famous painting of six different European city Museum of Art. Finland lost work is Schjerfbeck “California” from the Didrichsen Helsinki Art Museum. Six European museums have lost a valuable painting, and the only way to find the lost works of art is to play The Spiral Web site, game http://www.thespiral.eu/

    And it really is a game. Map-spread, anyone can try to locate the paintings and to find out where the nearest works are currently on the move. A mystical Facebook profiles, a group of role players, will add a uniqueness in a game. Also users photos uploaded are used a of police investigation as material in a series.
    – The game allows users to create content in series. Viewers can try to find the painting. The game will require the departure from your computer, out for a world, says Antti Huttunen, YLE Marketing
    – And someone of the common man really find paintings, Huttunen’s permission. ”

    / Sanna-Kaisa

    Fef.
    http://ylex.yle.fi/uutiset/popuutiset/eurooppalaismuseoista-varastettiin-arvotauluja-mystinen-tv-sarja-valjastaa-katsoj

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