There's is where it can be hard to classify games as one thing. To me Kingdom Hearts has always been more of an RPG

Now this is interesting. Traditional schooling forces students to read a required text.

This non-linear progression makes a player more connected to a game.

The first video game I remember ever reading was Final Fantasy VII. The game spaned 4 discs and contained a lot of dialogue to read. I find that many games today contain less of this, as it's a lot of voice-over now, but reading through this form should be encouraged.

I don't like these terms. We don't call books or othe arts forms detrimental. Yes, too much of anything can be bad.

There is lots of crossover in today's video games and I can be hard to classify games under wonder genre.

When I was younger I would bring video game guides to school which I enjoyed reading much more than the traditional schoolwork I often struggled with.

Often thousands.

While my history of play mostly revolved around video games, I do agree that play extends to just more than them.

I look forward to learning with you since my blog post, which I'm finishing up still, is pretty much the opposite of yours. :) I find games enjoyable, because I do think imagination is used a lot in them.

You might still hate games at the end of this class, but I will be interested in seeing if any of your views change at the end of the semester.

I think this may be a little misleading. By most accounts, overall interest in tabletop roleplaying games has been on the rise.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/life/entertainment/story/2013/jul/29/after-40-years-popularity-tabletop-gaming-ri/114446/

Interest in D&D has lowered in the roleplaying game community because there are so many other great options now days.

Any fans of Sid Meier's work will recognize that fact. The level of realistic detail balanced with so many fun elements makes for a fantastically covert educational experience.

Clearly, art imitating life; but one can easily see how the reverse can also be true especially in regards to perpetuating stereotypes.

This is such a critical component to successful learning. We, as a culture, have framed failure in such a way as to make it seem like the end. We need to teach students to fail forward. To a scientist, there is no such thing as a failed experiment; only more data gathered.

As I mention in the video, I think a more prominent "here's the place to start" might be helpful. One person had started a "training" area, but it was a little out of date and not the easiest to navigate. I don't know how many times I visited it before I realized it had a feature I had been looking all over for (a beginner's glossary). But it was listed under Miscellaneous and you only really saw it was there if you scrolled through everything to that section. A great effort on that person's part, but it could be improved!

I doubt I would be back, unless someone contacted me with a really great explanation!

It seems that most people consider the training levels as beginner enough. However, I did also get the scoop that the free version I am using is one of the earlier game versions, so it may be that the training levels have improved with new updates.

I didn't really notice much additional info given for people, although, I'll be honest, I didn't really look that closely. When you asked about how many women are on the site, I realized that I had no clue! A few people that I interacted with had screen names and/or images that suggest they are more likely male. I don't remember encountering anyone in particular that I can easily infer as being female.

I never figured I'd appreciate the space more than the game. That was really a revelation to me.

To a certain extent, I'd say it doesn't if it's working. There is a reason why people stay in the space, and, I imagine, if power became over-played there would be a lot less going on here. However, as a concept, it starts to bring us back to some "big picture of humanity" concepts that revolve around power and control. It's difficult to not envision the utopian/dystopian visions that are currently popular in film and literature. And, you know, one person's Utopia is always someone else's Dystopia...

Which relates nicely back to the discussion of agency, ownership and vision in Tategate (aka, Annospate:)). What are your rights as "owner" of a space? Of content? What are the boundaries/are there boundaries (I think Gamergate shows us that there are)? What happens when visions collide and who must give way?

So true! It's hard to slip in and out of a room without anybody ever noticing. Not a big challenge online, most of the time.

I do sometimes find it surprising how differently people tend to behave if they think they won't be caught out...

This is a really good question! Since I have no explicit examples of what's "too much" on the site, it's really hard to judge how much is actually being controlled. I suspect they don't crack down on every little disagreement, but I don't really know for sure...

Thanks, Susan! I think it's good to push our personal boundaries (which you might also be able to relate to;-)). I'm glad to be working with a group of people that supports our forays, and, as Susannah suggests in her comments for Code Combat, it makes it much easier to explore when you know you've got a supportive space to head back to at the end of the day.

Interesting thought!

I didn't get anything that I would consider a negative response. A few people were more inclined toward pointing "in the right direction" rather than explicitly helping, which I think is fairly common in forums. I, personally, find this annoying at times when I've been fairly explicit about having searched those areas. And, for the most part, I was framing questions in terms of opinion ("do you have a favorite resource for..."), rather than asking for any sort of set answer. It's not horrible to redirect questions, but it's not always treating someone as an individual with whom you're engaging in conversation, either. I'd say those were the least engaging moments of interaction overall.

I didn't really think about them while I was posting. I imagine most people don't really think about it unless they run into trouble...

My thought here is that while there is a certain degree of conferred leadership (usually people who participate a lot or are known for having a particular expertise, perhaps a moderator), Squad members are employees and they have final control over how/what people are sharing within the Community. They are hired by a company (Squad), therefore, the company controls the appointed leadership of the space. Does that make more sense? Lisa suggests in her comment that she sees this as a different role (administrator rather than leader).

I wish that I had gotten a better picture of what would actually count as a flare-up since what is "moderated out" could span quite a range. I'm guessing that there's still room for discussion/disagreement, which wouldn't preclude contested or controversial discussion, as long as people were keeping a certain level of respect in their discourse. I'm guessing that some of those more technical conversations would be helpful in answering some of this point better as that's where "contested" information is more likely to show up. I wonder if searching the forums for "polite argument" would give me any results...

It doesn't appear to have one...CommonSenseMedia suggests 14+ and I see a few suggestions to parents around the web that say it would likely be an E-10+ because of the crashing and (un-depicted) death of crew (the Kerbals).

I think that's probably a good thought, although there's nothing that expressly states it anywhere. There is also the following guideline, which is interesting in relation to minors: "(4.4) Users under the age of 18 who reveal their age and/or face on official KSP community channels, may have their messages/photos removed for privacy purposes." Not sure if that is a common practice...

Yes, soon to be updated (fingers crossed).

Yes, like finding Scott Nicholson in a kilt!

But in all seriousness I could spend a quite a bit of time on this site. There is so much to explore.

That's a lot of questions! I'm going to say that there is a misconception in the general population about who plays tabletop games. There was a Dungeon and Dragons "panic" in the 1980s that may have started it all.

I started a discussion and was open about participating for a school project. Other members were very welcoming, and wanted to get me off to a good start so gave me some "geek gold" so my avatar wasn't blank.

I also got some interest in our course from some members, so I shared our course website and my blog so they could take a look.

I'm not sure how to actually give others gold as I don't have any to give. Another way to get gold is to financially support the site. My husband does this every year.

I think this type of person might be more of a passive participant. There is a lot of information on the site, and if you look hard enough you'll probably find it.

Sometimes I thought that you all were going to think I was weird playing so many games!

Yes, I didn't explicitly find anyone being negative towards the classic games, but I didn't look too deeply either.

I think it's a great way to promote community.

The outdated interface was limitation enough! Also, I didn't find a "how to" section on the site, that probably would have helped.

I did see some posts that were deleted but it wasn't indicated by whom. Usually threads get locked when they get to controversial or out of control.

He's actually the one that showed me how to log my game plays and post to Twitter!

He's also offered up some suggestions of things I should have put into my presentation such as game rule translations and "Math Trades". Math trades are where you can trade games with others going through the administrators on the site. Most people won't trade with new members so this service helps.

Yes? I didn't particularly look at him for answers, he offered advice (constantly) because he was so excited that I was participating in this site for my project. He did help me pick out some of my microbadges.

It was! I think I might enjoy this game more knowing the broken rule. It's typically a game we only play when we have 6+ people, and it's always difficult when you're group gets that big.

Yes, very fun! I had a good time picking everything out, and of course the cute picture of my dog as my avatar :)

You can tell, a new user has this indicated in their "overtext" of their avatar until they change it. Game designers, artists and publishers have special tags. Also those that support the website get a special tag.

Exactly, this hasn't quite translated to our home life yet. My husband is designing his own game, but that doesn't make him any better at reading rules to other games :P. I believe he is the exception to the rule.

I know, eh? I know the people I game with would stick up for me if anything like that were to happen. But they've been my/my husband's friends for a long time.

The author doesn't state her name on her tumblr site so I left it out. Some people did some digging and found it...

Right, with such a large membership, and having an uncommon last name, it made me a bit anxious.

I've playing this game a few times and we always ended before the last round because there was an obvious winner, so I asked if we were doing something wrong, and of course we were :)

I posted in the women and gaming forum about this project and got some "geek gold". Enough to purchase 5 micro badges and an avatar. My husband supplemented the rest to get my "overtext".

Yes, I posted asking how to transform a boring faculty development session into a game using google apps, and got some interesting results!

I'm not sure I meant this to mean this is how you become an insider, it's just common in my group of friends.

This is likely due to having a stronger systems knowledge as Gee states it.

It appeared that you were an insider on this community given your knowledge and that you felt comfortable. Non-insiders would not be able to follow the conversations or be able to produce the caliber of work necessary for engagement.

From what I saw in your presentation, this is not a site for beginners. Even though this was a nurturing affinity space, it seemed that there were multiple instances of blunt commentary. Was I perceiving this accurately?

I like how you mentioned trying to draw forth discussions from different threads in the Unity Community. You mentioned that when your posts were brief, you would get the most engagement from people. Why do you think brevity attracted the most participation?

I come back to "individual and distributed knowledge" for this space. There are lots of examples of individualized experiences/knowledge sharing - that's probably particularly true here where people are more regularly needing feedback specific to their projects in order to move forward. However, from your tour of the space, it seems like there are also many places where distributed knowledge is important and useful because it allows people to get the less project-specific "stuff" out of the way without waiting for individualized answers.

It seems like you were somewhat inclined to bounce ideas/experiments off of your affinity space to see what would happen. I like this aspect of your presentation as it illustrates an awareness of, and a playfulness with, our somewhat constructed experiences in these various spaces we’ve chosen I think your approach highlights the usefulness of "trying it out" in settings other than just the classroom in order to better understand real life applications, limitations and practicalities.

I enjoyed your analysis of different types of contributions versus the various types of responses you received. If I understand correctly, more interest and response seem to be generated when you posted things that were geared toward catching the eye of the more active members. You also mention that short responses to discussion threads seemed to get more likes and that you could get a higher Retweet count when you included key terms to get the bots to take over pushing your Tweets.

I like this setup for adding responses via hypothes.is! Posting in segments is a bit easier on the brain, I think.

From your descriptions, it sounds like the vast majority of the time people are providing feedback, which can include constructive criticism, brainstorming and polite support, with the general push toward encouraging people to continue forward with their ideas, although that encouragement might also come with some practical “heads up” about the realities of what they’re trying to accomplish (I’m thinking of the responses to “BingoBob” that certainly included ideas for moving forward, but also added a bit of a reality check to the situation). Did you see any areas where people got testy or defensive? What happened if the conversation started going downhill?

You should consider getting a kit. They're fairly reasonably priced at $100 (US) plus shipping and handling. Additionally, their website has instructions for assembling your own kit; should the overseas shipping be too much.

It's really quite fun. I love how it is highly adaptable to any content area or age level.

The games can be credited with multiple designers upon publishing.

I definitely think that you can. It is very organic in its nature. It seems to be adapting to meet its users' needs over time and that can be a very messy process (just like nature). It also seems to have grown an extra organ that goes unused like an appendix (their forum).

Perhaps I am being a technological curmudgeon, but I really like how forums work (that's so 2 minutes ago). Topics are clearly organized into threads, and using the search feature is common practice. Also, information has a temporal stickiness that can be very useful for getting a lot of eyes on a project.

Ideally, I would have them use Facebook and Twitter for sharing cool ideas and driving traffic back to the forum. This would take a lot of social media management, and may be beyond the company's current capability.

The biggest limitation is that information can quickly get buried, and most people don't use facebook's search function. Once you actually get to a platform for collaboratively creating (like Google Docs) working together is much easier. I did eventually find a forum, but the last post was from early March, so in essence the forum is a ghost town.

As soon as I get some projects out of the way, yes. I want to run a game on one of the last days of school.

I had considered that, but I don't have a very strong following on twitter amongst music educators. Music teachers are notorious for a being late adopters in regards to technology. If you hear a bunch of music teachers talking about twitter, it is more likely that they are talking about Olivier Messiaen's music.

For all intents and purposes, all of the people were educators. It seems that their content matters follow the typical distribution of educators (not overly represented in any specific content). The most important attribute that I have seen is that they all seem like a very "playful" bunch of people. While I see this quality in educators once in a while, I would not typically characterize educators as being a playful group (which is a shame).

Not that I saw on the published games, but if you are in the design documentation, you could comment through Google Docs.

Just this morning, another music educator joined in with the conversation. She even added some information to the google doc.

Not intentionally. But they did a great job of putting information in places that you wouldn't think to look. Either, I joined the community mid-transition, or they are expecting that the kind of person that would join this community would leave no stone unturned.

I have, but I'm still waiting for it to arrive.

Surprisingly, I just got another hit this morning, and this person even made some comments on the Google Doc.

Thanks! I had to rewind my brain back about a decade to my theatre training.

Firestein asserts the following about scientists “But it is when they are most uncertain that the reaching is often most imaginative.”

I have learned to refer to this as doubt with a healthy response.

A short time ago I finally came to the realization that ignore and ignorant derive from the same Latin root. It helps!

I had tweeted that I was in lurker mode prior to the flashmob, but once I stepped into the sandbox, I couldn't help but participate. What I found especially motivating was the song "Hip to be Square." Once that song was playing, I was digging all around the sandbox!

Can’t shake the feeling that there’s a bit of a Hawthorne Effect at play with #ILT5320.

The video is here. It's great, he's in a kilt! https://boardgamegeek.com/video/1465/power-grid/board-games-scott-020-designer

Some were dismissive, and said some ill-informed things like "Oh, that's a lot of incidents for one person!" or "No game company would ever do that!" Some chose to take her side, some chose to keep people in check, and some were down right trolls.

I don't think so, I think people might be more careful with what they said, but board gaming seems like a very social hobby (you actually have to play face2face with other people), that might have something to do with the acceptance of being open in such a public manner.

I shamelessly posted in the forums that I was taking a games and learning class and I was exploring BGG for my affinity space, and members were very welcoming and gave me geek gold with instructions to personalize my avatar. It was a great experience.

Not my idea! Full credit goes to Brian.

And, on the other hand, where negligence borders upon, or even becomes, abuse.

This is such an important recognition. Ironically, it likely took multiple game nights, multiple sets of interaction over time, to recognize this a) as a dynamic and b) as such a problem. I wonder if you could have identified the significance of this dynamic upon your first game night...?

Given what you do know about this situation, would you qualify this as victim blaming?

I wonder what impact this public action will have on future group attendance.

A wonderful critique

Yes, and... I anticipate there's a bit caveat coming...

Hi Tedy. Thanks for sharing with us your experience in Activeworlds 3d.

What does it mean to be an insider? How do you know? And how would you describe this space to an outsider?

This game makes it easy to distinguish between insiders and outsiders by creating the affinity space within the gamespace. In essence, all people within the game are insiders. I want to take this a step further and discuss the concept of insiders inside the game. It seems the developers went to great measures empower players to create spaces that are safe from others changing things. There are micro-communities within the larger that players can belong to.

Like my interest in "glimpsing" the value of open annotation?

Relevance to everyday learning and knowing is also really important for children - I wish schools adopted such an approach more regularly.

Are you referring to Graphite, the broad field of education, or politics? While might tongue-in-cheek question might appear as a joke... I'm not joking ;)

I was wondering about this while watching your screencast. To what extent did you interact with other Graphite members? Or how are you planning to do so, especially once you begin teaching your courses?

Yes, I was wondering about educators agency as well when watching your screencast. How does an affinity space like this encourage educators' agency?

Indeed, and as you note on a number of occasions during your screencast. It's nice to have such notable funders backing a project like this - it adds to a sense of validity.

This crowd-sourced approach to reviewing media (whether videos, apps, or games) is a wonderful way of honoring educators' knowledge and experience.

During yesterday's annotation flash mob Susannah made a similar point. How do we navigate this information so that it is useful? How do we "ride the wave" (as she said)?

I appreciate that Goethe has been a presence - a companion of sorts - throughout your learning this semester. I'm glad he made an appearance in your affinity space project!

Cormier offers the rhizome as a metaphor for networked, digital age learning, and tests his analogy-as-theory in open online courses named for the rhizome. Here is a foundational text of his describing how community can be curriculum.

Definition: pledge or bind (a person or an organization) to a certain course or policy. Don't we all want the same outcome, learning to happen? By whatever means necessary.

This is why the early cMOOCs are so fascinating. They were courses designed to both share and test theories of digital age learning: connectivism, or connective knowledge, or rhizomatic leanring.

I can only imagine. Cue pouty lips. As if, the act of rebelling would undo the extinction of the prehistoric creatures. I had to Google Apatosaurus. Is it in fact true? It looks like it is a variation of a Brontosaurus. I should probably not be hyper-focusing on this one particular detail. #laserfocused

It was never renamed the Apatosaurus. It was the Apatosaurus from the beginning.

This is a great reason! Think about children, they try things all the time to "see what would happen", why do we disregard this as adults?

Lovely beasts.

But there's always learning in trying. I heard a great quote on the weekend "80% of the time you're playing a game you're failing at your goal", and I think that it also applies to real life, it's how we learn.

This speaks to the power of interest-driven learning and the learners' need to find others with like interests in order to go deep into a content.

I love when companies or organizations use the word LAB. It sets the stage for the unknown & gives freedom for new & exciting results, free of expectations.

And yet I think it's also important to understand that while digital natives (aka, the children being taught now) may understand how to use a device and access a wealth of information, they will still need help learning the underpinnings and contexts in which technology fits into our lives and societies (and also ways in which it might not). Being a good digital citizen and having an understanding of what technology affords you as an individual/us as a society has a great deal of value.

Sometimes, to some people, it is magic.

When we dare to explore new realms of reality or explore uncharted territories in a routine, it is hard to take that first step. Unlike, something we know inside & out, or in this case, "lived & breathed"

so well described. Especially when we think about technology in terms of extensions of ourselves: "who we are is due to the feedback loops between us and our tools as part of our cognitive arsenal "

Harry Potter!! Who went to a very low tech school, from what I could tell...

Key emphasis on the word "widen", digital should be used to expand practices already in place, until the digital gap has been bridged. Some educators are just not completely there yet.

Maybe this means there are no traditional textbooks that are so familiar to the university context.

There very definitely are texts.

Personal Learning Networks, by Will Richardson and Rob Mancabelli

Cognitive Surplus, by Clay Shirky

Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom, edited by Antero Garcia

Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out, edited by Mimi Ito

While this is something of a random list presented in a random order, each of the books above had an impact on me. They speak to the way digital tools and the Internet are impacting learning and they offer promising practices that educators can build on. It is important that we can point to texts and a body of scholarship that frame the experiments we conduct when we use open online practices.

What are the characteristics of this rambunctious learning? Is it an Edupunk notion of following your interests while thumbing your nose at the ivory tower?

The first time I used Genius.com with a group of students, one boy- a senior happily adding notes to a poem- began speaking in a robotic voice saying, "Must... accrue... Rap... Genius... points." He was joking for the benefit of his peers but he was also responding to a social platform with novel features. As a teacher, I appreciated the energy and the sense of discovery that day.

I also loved dinosaurs as a child. I should track down a photograph...

Is Watters an outlier on this list? To me she's an important critical voice who challenges the educational technology industry and points out how it might replicate inequitable outcomes. I don't think she's someone who experiments with teaching and learning in these digital spaces except to the degree that she is a powerful voice in the blogosphere.

This stage is marked by adults using computers for social and personal purposes in ever increasing numbers while educators generally hold tight to traditional methods and tools due to discomfort with change. Into this stasis disguised as change, software companies offer expensive but simple solutions where the educators should know no solutions exist.

Love this quote! I think this perspective helps get rid of some of the stereotyping people are prone to when it comes to the digital divide among professionals.

It really resonates with Kevin Kelly’s : "technology is the real skin of our species"

You might want to try out Dixit. There's an episode of TableTop that features the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6UlbxeDE0w

How do you feel about cooperative games like Pandemic?

I'm sorry that your group made you feel this way :( That's not very "nurturing". Have you tried suggesting to them to try a lighter game once and while (such as Codenames)? I've been following your blog and twitter and it seems like they've drowned you in mid-range / heavier games which seems like a really rough start to playing board games.

This is fantastic! Some people really enjoy lore and stories in their games (like I do), and some don't. This game appeals to many!

Could just say "Cities: 2". but I get what you're saying

I'm really happy that your group is open to playing games that everyone can enjoy!

But there's the cooperative aspect which is fun. Who are you going to invite along to fight or defend? How will that affect the game?

HOORAY! I knew it would happen! There's a board game out there for everyone :)

Can I ask why you chose a board game group as your affinity space?

How long did it take you to beat the game?

Curious, what platform do you use to play the game? I'm going to assume mobile, since most free2play is often on that platform (but not always).

This also reminds me of the term my husband and I use with f2p games: "Pay 2 win". Is that an option in this game?

Talent trees seem to be getting more and more complex. Did you use any online resources (or affinity spaces) to help you with your skills?

This doesn't surprise me one bit... any specific MMORPGs that stand out for you?

Nice connection to the surrounding culture of this particular social experience.

You're likely familiar with the concept of "whales," yes? This piece from a few years ago has always stood out to me.

Similar to pathways of interest-driven learning, perhaps? I'm reading this and thinking of parallels to course design, how learning environments afford participants multiple opportunities to navigate "upgrades" throughout a learning trajectory...

Are there nonethical microtransactions on MMORPGs? It looks like a huge game sight that although games are free, it's all about the add-ons.

I wonder how many f2f players end up secretly switching over to the dark side simply to purchase cool player schwag? Wanting to feel like better players.

Is this a fancy way of saying you give the player choice?

Curious, did you make "air quotes" with your fingers?

Or even "seemingly" pointless, per Wikipedia's definition. I thought about riffing on this qualifier "seemingly," and exploring the connections among flash mobs as performance, the perception of activity, and annotation as form of public (and "open") performance... but those meandering thoughts are well-beyond the scope of this practical invitation.

Great question, and I'm curious too - time for a literature review! #kidding #notkidding

Are referencing the concept flow as described and studied by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi?

Interesting... reading your thoughts, I would return to Bevelier et al's study on visual perception and cognition, and compare how this specific scenario compares to her team's review of current neuroscience research.

Reading this and thinking about the Dungeons & Dragons video recently posted as a Retro Report in the New York Times.

What an interesting set up for research... I'm intrigued!

The fact that these incredible learning scientists and scholars are familiar names is just awesome - win for you, win for the course.

And what an excellent reason to read an article!

I see a parallel to course design and pedagogy. My hope is that courses like INTE 5320 have helped you/other learners connect various dots so that it is easier to step outside the role of participant (and often consumer of content) and into the role of course co-designer.

This is coming up all across our course right now - cooperative versus competitive game play. Susan has been writing and thinking about this a lot.

Is this unique to video game design... or to design activities generally? From dance choreographers to architects, it seems as though there might be some elements of these three qualities inherent to those respective design experiences, too. On the other hand, what is it about (video) game design that makes this trifecta particularly effective?

Interesting that we've examined - in some way - three of these game design platforms:

• Gamestar Mechanic in the Alex Games article
• Scratch in the Peppler & Kafai article
• And Kirk has joined the Unity community as his affinity space

As I've likely mentioned, I'd welcome the opportunity to pair a game design course with our games and learning course - two semesters - focusing on learning first semester, then design in the second.

Why?

huh... from my perspective, I'm seeing this happening quite a lot via Twitter, via blogs and commentary (and Hypothesis annotations), and also via our annotation-as-discussion when a particular course text aligns with people's interests (like games and learning in higher education/adult learning contexts). Would a group project of some sort have amplified this type of collaboration for you?

Is this not happening via our various course blogs? I'm thinking about Robert's consistent blogging about video games and language learning, Susannah's affinity space participation that examines coding skill development, Lainie's ongoing commitment to libraries and information accessibility given her professional responsibilities... and - at a more meta-level - this course itself and a design that pairs the study of games and playfulness with playful design, pedagogy, and participation.

Just curious, because I'm often involved in similar course design and evaluation efforts - what types of feedback/data did you receive from these students to capture the "transformative" aspects of this learning experience?

Literally immersive - that's wonderful.

Where are you drawing this from?

Given your comments about Twitter, was there a conference-sponsored backchannel during the keynote? That's often a very informative - and participatory - element of keynotes that I really value - and whether I'm watching the talk or giving it myself.

This is very true... and also scares me a bit. I have a forthcoming conclusion to a book about educators as game designers (it'll be published soon, I was hoping we'd have a chance to read it this semester) in which I argue against the "bid data" and learning analytics developments in game-based learning. Here's one paragraph, a bit out of context, but it's a sense of thinking on this topic:

Teacher Pioneers also contests a narrative that games are a means of thoroughly assessing learning given supposed shortcomings in educators’ ability to understand what students know. An ill-informed logic—in the worst of cases—suggests that educators possess neither the skill nor the professional disposition to accurately or adequately assess what their own students have learned during a given lesson or upon completion of a unit. As a tool that exemplifies the mining of big data and the capabilities of embedded learning analytics, digital video games are often lauded as a means of closing this presumably troubling gap in educator competency. Yet when educators do use digital games as a means to assess students, the game—in and of itself—rarely functions as the sole mediator of evaluation. A recent survey of more than 450 classroom educators investigated formative assessment practices during students’ digital gameplay. These educators did not passively monitor students’ gaming, as some narratives might suggest. Rather, the teachers actively observed their students, interacted with them via questioning, and created opportunities for complementary problem solving. Such relational and in-the-moment assessment practices can deepen and further contextualize students’ digital data trails. Video games can serve as a mechanism to assess what students know and can do. From this perspective, however, an outstanding tension concerns the extent to which educators’ assessment practices complement—or are ultimately circumvented by—the authority of algorithms.

I'm glad there were some unanticipated yet fruitful outcomes!

I take a very similar approach. A student and I were just discussing annotation and grading here.

Indeed... and what are the implications for how games, or playful experience generally, are structured within formal schooling?

What makes for simple design? What are the principles that guide the creation of a simple and playful game?

How people choose to adopt certain strategies within the formal set of rules, or how people bring "house rules" to their play of Uno?

Yes... and a tension here, as we discussed during the third cycle readings about gamification, is the extrinsic motivation associated with such "ego boosts."

perhaps like playing as a means to learn?

I'm wondering... are you making a judgement here about the need, perhaps benefits or limitations, of social collaboration?Just curious.

I think you'll be really taken with our readings later this term. There are various ways to assess student learning in formal classroom environments through games and game play. Particularly when we look at our cycle readings about teachers as game designers... more to come!

Hmmm, this seems like a big concern. Standardization and regulation of game-based learning seems not much different than rote memorization, or textbook recitation, or skill-and-drill. Old wine in new bottles, as the saying goes... I hope we don't take the playfulness out of game-based learning!

Check out the latest US Dept of Ed Educational Technology plan - there's a lot about formative assessment through game-based learning. It's actually quite progressive!

Here's my gut reaction: this formulaic approach to "integrating" games into schooling isn't really playful... as noted, I'm going to read this article, my own curiosity is piqued!

This is a powerful opening. I'll have to look up the article. I'm curious if there are citations accompanying that first sentence. What types of evidence support the claims?

The choice of roles is really great here and seems to allow something for different comfort levels and playing styles. I like that a lot.

Indeed, such a mindset helps to perceive failure as part of a longer-term trajectory, and not a static end-state that is consequential to the point of inaction.

These are really useful observations as they present such a stark contrast to the way in which students typically approach - and relate to - failure within formal school contexts.

A nice connection - and despite my limited experience with KTNE, there are a range of skills (communication, representation, problem posing, problem solving, etc.) that do becomes literacies of sorts in the context of game play.

I liked playing KTNE even briefly with Lisa and Brian, and it's nice to learn that you chose to pick up and give it a go!

I can see how we are doing that in our Games & Learning course.

Pedagogical Trifecta = Quality Learning! -content

-affective/experiential (best if experienced in a felt, embodied way)

-metacognitive (best is ss reflect, analyze, & identify how the exp. influenced their thinking)

No STEM Challenge workshop love for Denver, CO.

Sounds like a bit of an affinity space.

Yes!!!

That's pretty profound for a 7 & 9 year old.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=meta meta A term, especially in art, used to characterize something that is characteristically self-referential.

"So I just saw this film about these people making a movie, and the movie they were making was about the film industry..." "Dude, that's so meta. Stop before my brain explodes."

Very nice!

Which, given certain circumstances, may be quite a leap of faith! And, in some ways, isn't this what happens between students and their teachers?

Yes, which is why they are often positioned as such a good analogy for disciplinary learning - as Gee did in our very first cycle readings.