Wednesday, June 9, 2010
New game idea
I had my four-year evaluation meeting with the Provost yesterday and he suggested a good topic for a new game is Internet vs. library. I have a fun handout on the subject, but I think it would be a good topic for a game and one that students in all disciplines could benefit from. I'm excited, I haven't had any good ideas for games in a long time but want to keep making them. So now I have another project for the fall...
Friday, June 4, 2010
Come Out and Play Festival
The Come Out & Play Festival is in NYC this weekend. One day I will make it, though I'm feeling like I might have to get a smart phone before that happens. Last year, I just didn't have the money for a weekend in NYC, nor could I find anyone who wanted to go with me. This year I am 35 weeks pregnant, so traveling and running around hot city streets is out of the question. But I'm really happy they post brief descriptions on their Web site. It helped with designing the orientation game (which we submitted to ACRL as a presentation proposal for the annual conference), and I hope it will help design a pirate game I've been asked to consider for our college's scholars program. I was busy reading the book, but now need to start thinking about the game!
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Augmented Reality
I'm very interested in something that I've seen as a buzzword in several library presentations in the past 6 months, which is "Augmented Reality." It uses some kind of device like a smartphone or special computer with screen to show the real world with digital objects superimposed on it. For example, as I understand it, GPS navigation systems in cars are a kind of augmented reality. The maps represent very real objects while the directions are digitally superimposed on it.
There's an example in this video, which I think comes from National Geographic, of using real maps as grids to play a giant PacMan game. Players see the streets through their goggles, but they also see the floating white balls they need to collect if they are PacMan, or they see other players as PacMan or ghosts. You can also do this without the computer technology, as can be seen in this picture of Pacmanhattan.
Museums are creating games using this idea. For example, here is a video that explains how students visiting a museum in Austria are asked to find things, and they take a picture of a barcode of the correct objects, they can also interact with the instruments on display by virtually playing back a short piece of music on a keyboard, or pumping the billows for an organ. They also see flying green diamonds when they scan a new room in the museum.
Many of the Come Out and Play Festival games have people use their own smart phones, which I don't think you could do in the museum game. I think any of this is beyond my technical abilities, but it's still something to keep an eye on. And perhaps you can use computers with regular Internet access at certain locations to enhance reality. Or vice versa, which I already do with my spies game. After all, we're trying to teach students to use the most appropriate resources and sometimes those are online and sometimes they must be found in the stacks.
There's an example in this video, which I think comes from National Geographic, of using real maps as grids to play a giant PacMan game. Players see the streets through their goggles, but they also see the floating white balls they need to collect if they are PacMan, or they see other players as PacMan or ghosts. You can also do this without the computer technology, as can be seen in this picture of Pacmanhattan.
Museums are creating games using this idea. For example, here is a video that explains how students visiting a museum in Austria are asked to find things, and they take a picture of a barcode of the correct objects, they can also interact with the instruments on display by virtually playing back a short piece of music on a keyboard, or pumping the billows for an organ. They also see flying green diamonds when they scan a new room in the museum.
Many of the Come Out and Play Festival games have people use their own smart phones, which I don't think you could do in the museum game. I think any of this is beyond my technical abilities, but it's still something to keep an eye on. And perhaps you can use computers with regular Internet access at certain locations to enhance reality. Or vice versa, which I already do with my spies game. After all, we're trying to teach students to use the most appropriate resources and sometimes those are online and sometimes they must be found in the stacks.
Back, for now
I've been thinking a lot about games, esp. as this busy school year wraps up. I've gotten back into the literature and found that much has been published in the last year and a half. I will post some good article recommendations soon.
I'm working on writing up an article on my Goblin Threat game for Indiana Libraries. The proposal was accepted a while ago, and now the actual article is due very soon. I also submitted a book chapter for a book called Let the Games Begin, which should go to press towards the end of the summer. I submitted It's Alive, and was contacted by the editors to write a chapter on Goblin Threat as well. The editor of Indiana Libraries was alright with this, and they are very different formats, so it looks like it will be two chapters in this book. I'm very excited to have a chance to get the word out about games in libraries in print!
My office mate recently returned from LOEX and shared her conference report. I've been quite interested in a game called BiblioBouts which was presented there. They haven't actually tested it with students, I think they plan to this fall. I hope they will publish results on their Web site shortly after. I will be very curious to see how this goes over. Their system of scoring is also quite intriguing. I'm not sure I agree with it, but I also don't think I understand it very well.
Here, I have been asked to think about a game for our college's Scholars' Program. The theme this fall is pirates. Since I don't know much about real pirates, I've been reading the assigned book, called The Invisible Hook, which explores the economics of piracy in its heyday (18th century). Most of the modern, popular conceptions of pirates (derived from movies like Pirates of the Caribbean) are so off. I also got a copy of Hosting a Library Mystery by Elizabeth Karle. I've only read the first chapter, but it seems like it will be highly relevant to planning games. In the first chapter, she states that the first steps are to decide what you want players to accomplish, and to choose a theme. I've always said the first step to an educational game is deciding what you want them to learn. So we're off to the right start. I will post highlights here soon.
So hopefully I can have a summer that will be full of learning about game-based learning, though my professional summer will also be cut short by maternity leave.
I'm working on writing up an article on my Goblin Threat game for Indiana Libraries. The proposal was accepted a while ago, and now the actual article is due very soon. I also submitted a book chapter for a book called Let the Games Begin, which should go to press towards the end of the summer. I submitted It's Alive, and was contacted by the editors to write a chapter on Goblin Threat as well. The editor of Indiana Libraries was alright with this, and they are very different formats, so it looks like it will be two chapters in this book. I'm very excited to have a chance to get the word out about games in libraries in print!
My office mate recently returned from LOEX and shared her conference report. I've been quite interested in a game called BiblioBouts which was presented there. They haven't actually tested it with students, I think they plan to this fall. I hope they will publish results on their Web site shortly after. I will be very curious to see how this goes over. Their system of scoring is also quite intriguing. I'm not sure I agree with it, but I also don't think I understand it very well.
Here, I have been asked to think about a game for our college's Scholars' Program. The theme this fall is pirates. Since I don't know much about real pirates, I've been reading the assigned book, called The Invisible Hook, which explores the economics of piracy in its heyday (18th century). Most of the modern, popular conceptions of pirates (derived from movies like Pirates of the Caribbean) are so off. I also got a copy of Hosting a Library Mystery by Elizabeth Karle. I've only read the first chapter, but it seems like it will be highly relevant to planning games. In the first chapter, she states that the first steps are to decide what you want players to accomplish, and to choose a theme. I've always said the first step to an educational game is deciding what you want them to learn. So we're off to the right start. I will post highlights here soon.
So hopefully I can have a summer that will be full of learning about game-based learning, though my professional summer will also be cut short by maternity leave.
Monday, September 7, 2009
New Game
I've started a new game, called Where in the World is Carmen Sanfransisco? I think you can easily guess what it's based on (I keep hearing Rockappella sing that in my head). I've been wanting to do this for a while, and now that I'm ready to do it, I have to crank it out and have it ready for next week. Unfortunately, the class I'm designing it for has a record low number of students, but I always believe in starting small. They're also all Spanish majors, so I had to throw out the idea of making some of the clues in each of the three modern languages taught here.
I am excited about this and it is slowly coming along. You won't be able to see much from the link above yet because I haven't added much programming to the buttons. But I'll be working on this a lot over this week and the weekend and hopefully will have something functional very soon!
Banned Books Week
Banned Books Week 2009 is quickly approaching. This morning, I turned all of my pictograms into individual posters and sent them to the print shop. I'm breaking down and sharing my favorite, but won't give away the answer.I sent out an e-mail to all faculty and staff asking for people to "host" a poster and was overwhelmed by the response. I now must write to everyone who responded to let them know who is and is not getting a poster. The decision is entirely based on spreading them around campus as evenly as possible, plus I had fun tying some of the puzzles and plots into various people or what their office does. I'm looking forward to seeing how many people come out to play!
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Success
I think it is safe to say that our freshman orientation activity was quite successful. From where I stood, it seemed much less chaotic than in the past, and at least the girls seemed to have a lot of fun.The only major problem that I know of was that a number of teams (mostly boys) did not want to go through all of the steps if they could guess the ransom note and find the dog. Some honestly thought the goal was to find the dog, others just didn't want to do it. Other than adding one more statement to the initial instructions that you have to do all steps before claiming the reward, I'm not sure how to get around this. I think in the past, these teams just copied other students' booklets. Our current activity does make it obvious if a team hasn't completed all of the steps. However, one of next years' goals will be to find a way to make this problem smaller.
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