- 1. arvel sig SuperNews Applied Research in Virtual Environments
for Learning July 2011
2. The ARVEL SuperNews is an initiative of The Applied Research
in Virtual Environments for Learning special interest group of the
American Educational Research Association.arvel sig SuperNews
Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning Editors:
Jonathon Richter and Sabine Lawless-Reljic Editorial Staff: Jodi
Asbell-Clarke, Annie Jeffery, Jeremy Kemp, Patrick OShea and Moses
Wolfenstein arvelsig.ning.com Photos Credits: Jonathon Richter,
Harvards EcoMUVE Team, Patrick OShea, Sabine Lawless-Reljic 3.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011)
- Invitation to submit immersive learning research for AERA
20124
- By Lisa Dawley, ARVEL Chairperson
- Welcome to the ARVEL SuperNews! 6
- By Jonathon Richter & Sabine Lawless-Reljic
- Introducing The ARVEL SuperNews Editorial Board 8
- Editor At-Large : Jodi Asbell-Clarke
- Augmented Reality Editor : Patrick OShea
- Emerging Technology Editor : Jeremy Kemp
- Video Games Editor:Moses Wolfenstein
- Virtual Worlds Editor : Annie Jeffery
- ARVEL Research Wiki Editor :Nicole Miller
- ARVEL Research Wiki Editor : John Muratet
- The Ecology of a Gaming Environment 10
- By Jodi Asbell-Clarke, ARVEL SuperNews Editor At-Large
- Introducing the Augmented Reality Column of the ARVEL
SuperNews15
- By Patrick OShea,ARVEL SuperNews Augmented Reality Editor
- Emerging Technology and Finding the Smartest
Recombinations17
- By Jeremy Kemp,ARVEL SuperNews Emerging Technology Editor
- By Moses Wolfenstein, ARVEL SuperNews Video Games Editor
- Welcome to Exploring Virtual Learning Worlds 26
- By Annie Jeffery, ARVEL SuperNews Virtual Worlds Editor
4.
- Invitation to submit immersive learning research for AERA
2012
- Lisa Dawley, ARVEL Chair 2011 - 2013
- Greetings, and welcome to another exciting year with ARVEL
SIG!Change is in the air, and we are so proud to welcome our new
officers, new editorial board members and super newsletter editors,
and many new members to the SIG.
- First, let me introduce you to this years officers:
- Lisa Dawley, Boise State University:Chair
- Jonathon Richter, University of Oregon: Past Chair
- Chris Dede, Harvard University:Honorary Chair
- Scott Warren, University of North Texas: Program Chair
- Amy Cheney, Appalachian State University:Workshop
Coordinator
- Brian Nelson, Arizona State University:Secretary/Treasurer
- Patrick OShea, Appalachian State University: Special
Events
- Sabine Lawless-Reljic, Independent: Communications
- Dennis Beck, University of Arkansas:Membership
- Shari Metcalfe, Harvard University:Awards
- A huge high five and my greatest thanks is owed to our esteemed
past chair and SIG co-founder, Jonathon Richter, for his four
amazing years of leadership to launch and establish the SIG.Jon
will still remain very actively involved as he works with Sabine,
Jodi Asbell-Clarke, and other top-notch contributors to create our
first Super Newsletter, with the very latest insights into the
world of educational research and immersive learning
environments.
- Scott Warren will be overseeing this years AERA program and
call for proposals.Please consider joining us in Vancouver, as were
planning a fun-filled (oh yes, we play games!) and interesting
program, complete with sessions, papers, our engaging hands-on
workshop, and some quest-based gameplay to support our inquiry into
the Shifting Relationships among Scholarship, Learning, and
Immersive Technologies.Proposals are due July 22dont miss it.Its
sure to be a blast!
- Finally, many thanks to Nicole Miller and John Muratet for
volunteering to oversee
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 5.
- the development of our wiki project, which you can read more
about in the newsletter.We need your contributions!
- We look forward to your support this year, in whatever form
that might take, and encourage you to participate with us as we
head forward on our journey to explore, develop and understand the
use of immersive learning in the 21 stcentury.Were on a mission to
change education, as our world continues to change around uswe need
innovators like you to make it happen!
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 6.
- Welcome to the ARVEL SuperNews!
- co-Editors in Chief Jonathon Richter and Sabine
Lawless-Reljic
- Immersive learning environments continue to emerge, grow, and
morph at astonishing rates. New platforms such as Jibe and Kitely
in virtual worlds, new interfaces such as EEG controllers and the
Microsoft Xbox Kinect for video games, and countless new corporate
and grant-funded research projects across the Spectrum of
Virtuality continue to inject fresh new ideas, new concepts, and
new approaches to educational research for the immersive digital
learning field. The Applied Research in Virtual Environments for
Learning (ARVEL) Special Interest Group at AERA continues to
embrace and create context for this unique research community by
inviting them to dialogue and responding with a cross-section of
community services.
- In addition to forming and operating a successful SIG within
AERA and hosting a substantive program each year at the AERA Annual
Conference, ARVEL SIG has conducted weekly public virtual meetings
on a broad range of relevant research topics, established a variety
of outposts in other immersive learning settings to showcase
virtual learning research, offered unique immersive learning
hands-on learning opportunities and topical workshops at the Annual
Conference, and hosted a social network and evolving
member-contributed Immersive Learning Research wiki. This issue 1.1
of the ARVEL SuperNews represents yet another iteration in ARVELs
collective attempts to best serve and provide an optimal framework
for our emerging Community of Practice.
- The ARVEL SuperNews aims to bring research-related news and
related events from across the Virtual Spectrum. From fully
immersive virtual world and video games to immersive experiences
that rely more on the physical world and the digital but slightly
augmenting the learning experience through cues and story to
emerging forms of immersive learning and issues the ARVEL SuperNews
has identified four areas - Virtual Worlds, Video Games, Augmented
Reality, and Emerging Technologies and four active scholars with
expertise in these areas to assemble our first SuperNews Editorial
Board across this Spectrum of Virtuality. Set to publish on a
quarterly basis, the ARVEL SuperNews aims to comb these
related-but-unique immersive learning sectors, examine them through
the lens of educational research, and better compile them for those
interested in learning in immersive environments. Because we
understand the very arbitrary nature of these artificially devised
sectors across the Virtual Spectrum and the breathtaking complexity
with which experts are grappling with to fully deal with the
technological, pedagogical, and
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 7.
- research-related issues in this space, weve additionally
appointed an at large position to assist with seeing the larger
picture and weaving the connections among and between Games,
Virtual Worlds, Augmented Reality, and Emerging Technologies
beats.
- While the ARVEL SuperNews Team invites ARVEL SIG members and
the greater community to submit newsworthy items whether it be
immersive learning events, new technology releases, educational
program announcements, related grant or projects opportunities, or
germane opinion pieces, we are also keenly interested in publishing
unique research-related articles related to immersive
learning.
- ARVEL SuperNews has set up an Editorial Review process for
accepting and peer reviewing substantive evidence-based articles
within the ARVEL SuperNews on a periodic basis. Published
Quarterly, the ARVEL SuperNews will accept submissions in APA
format of reports of immersive educational research up to 3000
words. Though well accept and review such submissions on any topic,
submitters are encouraged to submit articles that fit the ARVEL
SuperNews topic. The yearly calendar will be set each spring
following AERA and may be found in each issue of the ARVEL
SuperNews following the Table of Contents in each issue.
- The ARVEL Executive Committee is very excited to offer the
SuperNews and would invite you to join us in extending a very warm
welcome to our SuperNews Editorial Staff for 2011 2012:
- Editor At-Large: Jodi Asbell-Clarke
- Augmented Reality: Patrick OShea
- Emerging Technologies: Jeremy Kemp
- Video Games: Moses Wolfenstein
- Virtual Worlds: Annie Jeffery
- Jonathon Richter, co-founder of ARVEL SIG and Past Chair
- Sabine Lawless-Reljic, ARVEL Communications Chair
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 8.
- Introducing the ARVEL Editorial Board
- Editor At-Large Jodi Asbell-Clarke
- I am the director of the Educational Gaming Environments group
(EdGE, http://edge.terc.edu) at TERC in Cambridge, MA. My career
has taken me from working as a onboard navigation software analyst
on the first 25 missions of the space shuttle program to graduate
work in both astrophysics and education and teaching high school in
between. For the past two decades I have been developing innovative
materials for NSF-funded science education programs for K-12
students, teachers, and informal science audiences. Currently I am
working with the EdGE team to foster, support, and measure
scientific inquiry in several different types of social digital
games, ranging from massively multiplayer online environments
(MMOs) to web-based and augmented reality handheld games. EdGE is
studying the design scaffolds that foster voluntary and high
quality scientific knowledge building in social digital games. EdGE
games includeMartian Boneyards a game of scientific mystery that
took place in summer 2010 in the MMO,Blue Mars.Our next
game,Canaries in a Coalmine,is a web-based alternate reality game
starting in summer 2011 (http://inacoalmine.com)
- As editor-at-large of the ARVEL SIG supernewsletter, I will be
keeping an eye on the overarching models that are emerging in the
intersection of games and learning sciences. To kick this off, I
offer a model that has emerged from our work at EdGE. We have found
an ecological model useful to think about both design and research
of educational gaming environments and particularly, about the
relationship between design and research, and the relationship
between games and learning.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 9.
- ARVEL SIG Research Wiki Editor Nicole Miller
- Nicole C. Miller is a doctoral candidate in the Department of
Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education, with a minor in
instructional technology at Mississippi State University. Prior to
beginning the Ph.D. program she worked as a social studies and
educational technology teacher at a Los Angeles middle school. She
earned a Master of Arts degree in Education with an emphasis on
Computers in Instruction from California State University,
Northridge. She earned her B.A. in Political Science at UCLA. Her
current research interests include the use of virtual worlds for
learning, technology integration and middle level education.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 10.
- The Ecology of a Gaming Environment
- Jodi Asbell-Clarke, ARVEL SuperNews Editor At-Large
- Social digital gaming is an explosive phenomenon where youth
and adults are engaged in inquiry for the sake of fun. While U.S.
learners are becoming increasingly disengaged with formal and
informal learning environments, nearly all youth and most adults
are engaging more and more in Internet-based free-choice games (Ito
et al., 2008; Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickhur, 2010).
- In social digital games, players activities can be suggestive
of powerful learning models such as the community of practice model
(Lave & Wenger, 1991). The community of practice model grows
from situated learning theory, which suggests that knowledge,
activity, and environments are inextricably entangled (Lave, 1988).
The game design and players activity directly mediate the players
knowledge building and learning, which in turn impact the design
and evolution of the game.
- In games, players often work together as part of a community to
solve (often domain-specific) problems with access to informational
resources and tools necessary for each problem (McGonigal, 2011).
Peer-review, collaboration, sharing and analysis of data, and
evidence-based reasoning are occurring in many popular role-playing
games (e.g.,World of Warcraft ) (Steinkeuhler & Duncan, 2008;
Asbell-Clarke et al., 2011). These gaming activities are similar to
the habits of practicing scientists in professional communities who
share data and observations, challenge and confirm each others
claims, and work together to build theories through a
well-recognized and explicit peer-review system (Dunbar,
2000).
- A social gaming environment is a system of design, activity,
and progress that continually evolves with the participation of its
community. The players are as much a part of the evolving design as
the game developersthey are all part of an interconnected ecosystem
(see Figure 1).
- In this ecosystem model, the game is not delivered to the
community, but rather emerges from it. Game designers create an
environment with tools and resources, and create an initial
storyline that evokes player activity. Much thought and research
goes into how to develop: a) an environment that will draw players
in, b) tools that make it easy for players to do the activities
they are meant to do, and c) a narrative that compels them to
continue on. This careful design process is not finished once the
game starts, it continues as players start interacting with, and
shaping, the game.
- This framework of an ecosystem for games is not unique. Gee
(2004) describes a game as just this type of complex system that is
emergent between the system that a designer puts in place and the
way the player interacts within the
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 11.
- system. Cormier and Siemens (2010) describe learning
environments as systems that foster and support the creation of
communities and that are designed to be consistent with how
learners learn. Li, Clarke, and Winchester (2010) use a learning
theory they call enactivism to describe how learners can influence
their own learning environment, particularly in gaming.
- Figure 1: A framework for a participatory gaming environment
ecosystem
- In a well-crafted social game, players may form a community
while interacting with the game tools and resources and with each
other. Within this community, roles and identities emerge that
mediate players learning within the game. Game designers may play
characters to help facilitate the game and learn from the community
how to proceed in the ongoing design, allowing for an evolving,
dynamic game experience that is responsive to the player community.
Players activity results in progress in the game in terms of their
advancement within the game (points or status) and also their
individual and community knowledge-building. The new roles,
knowledge, and social structures they have established become an
integral part of the designed game, creating an evolving
interdependent ecosystem of design, activity, and progress.
- This ecosystem framework opens the door to a variety of
innovative pedagogical and research questions for learning in
games, for example:
- How can we design gaming environments to channel players
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 12.
- emergent inquiry towards question of intellectual and
educational interest?
- How can we support players activities to foster high quality
inquiry in a variety of areas?
- How can we measure the players progress in games in ways that
relate to learning that is applicable in the real world?
- In a participatory model, the community itself is central to
the answers for each of these questions. The design of the game
(the narrative, the aesthetic experience, and/or the social
experience) can pique players interests and encourage deeper
interactions, however the drive for the inquiry must come from the
players. Designers are able to support and nurture players inquiry
by providing access to a rich array of high quality digital tools
and resources, embedded in a rich and open-ended compelling
storyline. Some of these tools may be game elements designed with
strong pedagogical grounding in learning sciences. Resources may
include global (and publically-available) databases of scientific,
medical, and other research data useful for knowledge building
within complex game narratives. Some of the suggestions even may
come from players who only have the goal of leveling up in mind,
but nonetheless can find very innovative solutions for
accomplishing that goal.
- Players may be enticed to sustain their activity in the game by
their own curiosity as well as their sense of advancement in the
game, possibly by points that lead to leveling up in status and
also through recognition and roles that emerge in the relationships
among players in the community. Gamers own sense of identity as it
relates to achievement in the game may play a key role in their
desire, confidence, and perhaps eventually their competence in
skill areas related to the game.
- The social structures that players build and adopt in the game
become part of the narrative and game experience for players. The
information and resources that they gather, and ultimately the
knowledge that they build, can become the driver for further game
design. In a completely nimble and responsive system, designers can
be developing new tools, storylines, and characters based on the
evolving storyline driven by player interest.
- This open-ended design for educational gaming environments
raises as many challenges as exciting research questions. Learning
that takes place in games is motivated differently than formal
learningit instills a different mode of collaborative and
participatory involvement in the learning design, and it likely
needs very different measures than learning weve observed in formal
environments. There may need for a more post hoc examination of
content learning goals rather than designing towards specific
content outcomes. Participatory cultures, where knowledge building
is
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 13.
- decentralized from any one authority, may also include very
different models for assessment such as wisdom-of-crowds and
innovation crowd-sourcing. There is much research to be done to
understand how designed assessments can be used to measure learning
that takes place in an evolving and open-ended environment.
- In the answers to these questions lies the vision and potential
for social digital games to become transformative vehicles for
learning environments of tomorrow. And with that research may lie
solutions to the disconnect between our current educational systems
and the exciting media and cultural venues in which digital natives
are spending their lives.
- Asbell-Clarke, J., Edwards, T., Larsen, J., Rowe, E., Sylvan,
E., & Hewitt, J. (2011, April).Collaborative Scientific Inquiry
in Arcadia: An MMO gaming environment on Blue Mars.Paper presented
at the American Education Research Association Annual Meeting, New
Orleans, LA.
- Cormier, D., & Siemens, G. (2010). Through the Open Door,
Open courses as research, learning and engagement.Educause Review,
45 (4), 30-39.
- Dunbar, K. (2000). How Scientists Think in the World:
Implications for Science Education.Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology, 21 (1), 49-58.
- Gee, J. P. (2004).Situated language and learning: A critique of
traditional schooling . London: Routledge.
- Ito, M., Horst, H., Bittani, M., Boyd, D., Herr-Stephenson, B.,
Lange, P. G., et al. (2008).Living and Learning with New Media:
Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project . Chicago: John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media
and Learning.
- Lave, J. (1988).Cognition in Practice . New York: Cambridge
University Press.
- Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991).Situated learning: Legitimate
peripheral participation . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 14.
- Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Smith, A., & Zickuhr, K.
(2010).Social Media & Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young
Adults . Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Retrieved
fromhttp://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2010/PIP_Social_Media_and_Young_Adults_Report_Final_with_toplines.pdf.
- Li, Q., Clarke, B., & Winchester, I. (2010). Instructional
design and technology grounded in enactivism: A paradigm
shirt?British Journal of Educational Technology, 41 (3),
403-419.
- McGonigal, J. (2011).Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us
Better and How They Can Change the World . New York: Penguin
Press.
- Steinkuehler, C., & Duncan, S. (2008). Scientific Habits of
Mind in Virtual Worlds.Journal of Science Education and Technology,
17 (6), 530-543.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 15.
- Introducing the Augmented Reality Column of the ARVEL
SuperNews
- Patrick OShea, ARVEL SuperNews Augmented Reality Editor
- Welcome to the inaugural issue of the ARVEL SIG Super
Newsletter.Its my responsibility, as the Augmented Reality (AR)
editor for the newsletter, to explore the history, current status
and future of AR within educational settings.I hope to do this with
a fair amount of academic rigor, intellectual curiosity, good
humor, and help from my friends.
- For those readers who are unfamiliar with the concept of
Augmented Reality, at its most basic level it is the practice of
placing digital information on top of a physical space in such a
way that it can be accessed using a technological tool.This can
take many forms and there are numerous tools available with which
this data overlay can be accomplished (see, for example Layar or
Juneio) and the list is growing every day.Each of these tools acts
as a medium through which digital information can be either placed
atop the real world or accessed. Part of the purview of this
publication will be to explore these tools for their educational
usage and provide you, our reader, with a sense of their utility
and application to educational settings.Moving forward, each issue
will attempt to highlight some of the tools that are available
exploring the features and educational affordances of each.It is
unlikely that we will ever be able to have an exhaustive list of
the different AR tools, but we will do our best to cover as many as
we possibly can.
- The availability of these types of tools, however, doesnt
ensure the appropriate use of AR in educational settings.After all,
as most any educational technologist will tell you, the technology
itself isnt enough it must be placed into some larger context in
order to be effective. Essentially, it should be the solution to an
educational problem rather than a solution in search of a
problem.Educators should address the needs of their classrooms
using whatever tools are most appropriate.Augmented Reality can be
a tool that answers various educational needs, but, as a
technology, it is only as good as the context in which it is
placed.
- So, the question becomes, what is the educational problem that
AR addresses?Answering that question will be the other part of this
publication.More specifically, exploring how the tools can best be
used to address that answer will be the focus of the AR section of
the ARVEL SIG Super Newsletter.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 16.
- Squire and Jan (2007) define educational AR as games played in
the real world with the support of digital devices (PDAs,
cellphones) that create a fictional layer on top of the real world
context (p. 7).This, however, raises the issue of what the word
games means an area of no small dispute in educational circles.For
specifics of this dispute, I would defer to Moses Wolfenstein, who
is the Games editor for this publication.I do, however, like the
definition of games offered by Bernard Suits, who said playing a
game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles (as
quoted by McGonigal, 2011, p. 22).I read this as meaning that, in
their purest forms, games are freely accepted challenges something
that most of us would probably agree is what we wish for
students.
- What this means in practical terms is that we will have to
explore more than just the different AR technologies.We will also
have to explore the ways in which these tools are used in
educational settings.We will be looking to answer the question of
what educational problems exist that AR can effectively address.We
will be hoping to grow the field of inquiry into educational AR and
the circle of practitioners in a meaningful way.We will be looking
to spread the word beyond that circle of practitioners.Youll notice
that Ive used the word we a great many times in this introduction.I
have done this for a very specific purpose I need your help to do
these things.I need you to tell me about AR tools that you have
found and explored.I need your help to describe the educational
uses of these tools.And, most importantly, Ill need your help to
answer the larger question of what educational needs are addressed
by AR technologies.
- Were at a very interesting and exciting time.The field of AR in
educational settings is still at an early stage.There are many
exciting and innovative initiatives underway, and there is great
opportunity to explore the landscape of these tools and make sense
of whats available to us.But theres also an opportunity to inform
the direction that the field of AR takes moving forward.We can do
more than encapsulate what is happening in the area of AR we can
make happen those things that wed like to see happen.After all, as
Dennis Gabor said in 1963, the future cannot be predicted, but
futures can be invented.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 17.
- Emerging Technology and Finding the Smartest
Recombinations,Part 1: Creole Tech Jeremy Kemp, ARVEL SuperNews
Emerging Technologies Editor The last annual conference gave me a
chance to experience New Orleans for the first time. What a trip!
NOLA is the creole birthplace of Cajun, zydeco and Jazz. It struck
me that the citys mashup heritage is an interesting metaphor for
ARVEL. Its centuries of emergent hybridization parallel our habits
as educators using virtual worlds for learning. Like New Orleans,
the SIG is a hotbed of hybridization. Our creative experts sample,
remix and explore liminal spaces. We beg, borrow and steal
technologies and narratives from literacy education (Gee,
2003)(Caperton, 2010), physics (Squire, 2004), neuroscience
(Hunter, 2003), social psychology (Yee, 2007), fantasy fiction
(Berger, 2006), dystopian battlefields and even the preschool
playground. This article is a mashup tale of America's "Most Unique
City" and of AERA's most unique SIG to examine how we sample
emerging technologies to achieve what advertising and design writer
Warren Berger calls "smart recombinations." (Let me throw in some
multimedia here and ask you to listen to a music file while you
read. Im playing it while writing, and I will come back to it as an
illustration later in the article. Please start this in the
background: "Koop Island Blues"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEWW2zGGaKc) New Orlean's pastiche
origins and ever shifting sociological boundaries suggest novel
strategies for framing our new field and for describing our
prescient work with emerging technology. Our SIG is still fuzzy
around the edges, and this comparison makes it clear that the
conceptual borders and topical outlines will remain perpetually
fluid. We all know that ARVEL members are technically cutting-edge,
but what makes our design and research on immersive settings like a
stroll through the French Quarter with a Jazz soundtrack?First a
thread on New Orleans, Louisiana.... If the US is a melting pot
then NOLA is a piquant gulash. A cultural collage. NOLA wears the
finery of centuries of emergent culture in its food, architecture
and
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 18.
- languages. It has mad synthetic skills.Here's an example. Did
you get a chance to sample the Beignets at the Caf Du Monde in New
Orleans? AERA conference attendees lined up for these doughnut
confections and sipped caf au lait before meandering into the more
colorful bits. It's basically a square donut smothered in powdered
sugar. Nothing fancy; just a messy dessert from the creole coffee
stand (Danno, 2006). This old time treat was the highlight of my
after-hours tourist treks into the French Quarter. I can't get this
cuisine here in San Jose and it rings true as authentic culture
without a factory marketing wrapper. Indeed, I was drawn joyously
to the Caf as a California stripmall refugee. Caf Du Monde serves
this fried doughy confection and it was named the official state
doughnut of Louisiana. But it is not French. In fact, it doesnt
much resemble French beignets de carnaval which are filled with
fruit and lightly fried. It does rather share a lot in common with
Italian zeppole, a popular treat served in the Italian-American
community for St. Joseph's Day on March 19. This makes sense when
you understand that by 1905 nearly a half of the Quarters
population were Italian-born or second generation
Italian-Americans. The donut may be Italian, but it is still
technically "Crole." Before visiting New Orleans this first time,
I'd always assumed that creole was a spice that big chain
restaurants sprinkled on their meats. But the term first meant
'locally born of foreign roots.' These were the children of the
French and Spanish colonists who cherished their language and
culture even after Napoleon sold the city to Thomas Jefferson in
1803 -- along with 900,000 miles of its suburbs. Later the term
morphed to describe the language, race and culture that mixed and
mingled in NOLA. What does a donut have to do with ARVEL and
emerging technology in virtual environments for learning? Now on to
ARVEL. How do we predict or forecast "the new new thing" for
virtual environments and learning? To quote Gibson's soon-to-be
clich phrase,"The future is already here" Although this column
purports to give you a roundup of emerging technologies, most
academics reading this are already in the process of distributing
that future reality in their work. We are the AERA's experts at
repurposing tools to help our students. This is the core theme of
the SIG - Creole tech.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 19.
- In future columns I will be chronicling the ways ARVEL experts
are adapting emerging technologies from disparate fields and using
these connections to forecast areas for further exploration. I
welcome your comments and suggestions. And why did I choose Koop as
our soundtrack? This Swedish Jazz duo strings together thousands of
samples to create the layered sound behind Ane Bruns haunting
vocals and the accordion and clarinet you hear. For more on mashups
in popular culture, read Kakutani (2010). Keywords for this concept
include: sampling, hybrid vigor, dub remix, creole, smart
recombination, liminality, mashup, lateral thinking, emergent
gameplay, musique concrete, montage, collage. Sources Berger, W.
(2009). Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life and Maybe Even
the World. The Penguin Press. ISBN 978-1594202339 Berger, A.
(2006), Neverwinter Nights in the classroom, UMNnews. Retrieved
fromhttp://www1.umn.edu/news/features/2006/UR_83484_REGION1.html
Caperton, I. H. (2010). Toward a Theory of Game-Media Literacy:
Playing and Building as Reading and Writing. International Journal
of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations (IJGCMS), 2(1), 1-16.
doi:10.4018/jgcms.2010010101 Danno. Beignet Recipe Nola Cuisine. 15
Jan. 2006. Retrieved
fromhttp://www.nolacuisine.com/2006/01/15/beignet-recipe/ Gee, J.
(2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and
Literacy. New York: Palgrave/St. Martins. Hunter G. Hoffman, Todd
Richards, Barbara Coda, Anne Richards and Sam R. Sharar.
CyberPsychology & Behavior. April 2003, 6(2): 127-131.
doi:10.1089/109493103321640310. Kakutani, M. (2010 July 1). A
Mash-Up Culture: Ten to Watch. New York Times. Retreived
fromhttp://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/a-mash-up-culture-ten-to-watch
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 20.
- Kurt Squire, Michael Barnett, Thomas Higgenbotham, and Jamillah
Grant, Electromagnetism Supercharged! Paper published in The
Proceedings of the 2004 International Conference on the Learning
Sciences (Los Angeles: UCLA Press, 2004). Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N.,
Urbanek, M., Chang, F., & Merget, D. (2007). The unbearable
likeness of being digital; The persistence of nonverbal social
norms in online virtual environments. Cyberpsychology and Behavior
, 10, 115-121. Wikipedia articles for New Orleans, Beignet, Creole,
Warren Berger, Koop (band)
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 21.
- Moses Wolfenstein, ARVEL SuperNews Video Games Editor
- Where does the study of games fit within ARVEL? As games editor
for this publication, I have a few ideas about what the answer to
this question might be, and Ill offer a handful of thoughts on the
matter here. However, there are also a number of salient reasons
for leaving the question open as we embark upon this new endeavor.
Just to name two, the field of games and learning is in the process
of growing and expanding, and at the same time the concept of
virtual worlds (or virtual environments) appears to be more dynamic
now than it did even two or three years ago. As a result of the
ongoing changes to research, theory, and practice around games and
learning, I both expect and hope that the question of where games
fit in ARVEL will in large part be defined through the growth of
this publication over time. Still, some direction is certainly
called for as we begin this journey. In the words of the inimitable
Bilbo Baggins, It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your
door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet,
there's no knowing where you might be swept off to. (Tolkien, 1954)
Hence to provide us with at least some minimal guidance as we step
onto the road, here are a few of my impressions about where and how
digital games based research fits into the ARVEL landscape.
- To begin with, it seems likely that games are going to play an
increasingly significant role in ARVEL in the near future, simply
by virtue of the fact that games based learning is making
significant headway in classrooms and other formal learning venues.
With a recent spike in the development of effective games for
learning from companies like Filament Games (Marino, 2010), and the
successful implementation of game design based educational models
like Quest2Learn (Salen et al, 2010), games are becoming an
increasingly important feature in the landscape of educational
practice. In fact, if you were at
theGames+Learning+Societyconference last month, you might have
noticed that more of the program than ever before was devoted to
work around developing and using both digital and analog games in
formal educational settings. Hence, as the A in ARVEL stands for
Applied, grabbing hold of the games for learning trend and doing
research around it that is meaningful for practitioners will likely
be increasingly important for the ARVEL community as we move
forward.
- Following from this, I believe ARVEL is becoming an especially
strong venue for games based work that includes studies of both the
big virtual worlds like Second Life (Cooper et al, 2009), World of
Warcraft (Steinkuehler, 2010), and Quest Atlantis (Barab, Gresalfi,
& Ingram-Goble, 2010), and smaller digital ecologies, or
micro-worlds as
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 22.
- theyve been referred to by a number of scholars (Ito, 2007;
Games & Squire, 2011). After all, many of these micro-worlds
are seeing deployment in classrooms (Rosenheck, Perry, &
Klopfer, 2011; Tabula Digita, 2011), afterschool settings (Gee
& Hayes, 2010), and informal learning environments (Dede,
Ketelhut, & Ruess, 2003). Within the ARVEL framework of applied
research for learning, this means theres space in a venue like this
one for everything from response to intervention style studies that
evaluate the use of a particular game, to reports on new
developments around games for learning, to considerations of
blended efforts that work to integrate digital games with face to
face interaction.
- In addition, there is also clearly space within ARVEL to look
for lessons from the development of video games as designed
experiences (Squire, 2011) or as models of situated and embodied
learning (Gee & Hayes, 2011) that can inform the development of
learning in formal and informal environments. Current work on3D
GameLabfrom ARVELs own Lisa Dawley serves as just one example of
applied (or translational) research that is taking place in this
vein. Excitement around the topic of gamification, evident among
both practitioners and some educational researchers, also provides
a strong indication that game influenced design is likely to be an
increasingly pertinent topic for the ARVEL community. In this
latter regard, ARVEL in general and this publication in particular
hold a great deal of promise for helping us to develop more nuanced
understandings of what it means to make an experience more
game-like, and what aspects of gamification do and do not hold
promise in educational settings.
- Of course, gamification is just one of many emerging practices
and artifacts that promises to help define what role games research
is likely to play for ARVEL. The release of the beta version of the
game Minecraft by Marcus Notch Pearson late last year was met by
almost immediate adoption into game-based learning curricula
(Aubrecht, 2011; Gillispie, 2011). As Minecraft moves towards gold
release later this year, it will continue to provide just one tool
for both collaboration in the tradition of action research, and
other forms of applied games and learning research that can inform
educational practices. Of equal import is the ongoing release of
new middleware tools that allow children and adults with little
knowledge of programming to develop games and game-like
experiences. Googles branching narrative toolGoogle Breadcrumband
the game creation applicationStencyloffer us just two examples of
increasingly powerful tools that open up opportunities for
teachers, learners, and educational researchers to design and
deploy games and game like experiences. Additionally, as new
commercial games are released many of them like Little Big Planet 2
and even Portal 2 (its been a good year for sequels)
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 23.
- include level editors that offer new prospects for designing
learning experiences for research and practice.
- So, where will games and learning research fit in the ARVEL
landscape? By my estimation, theyre likely to occupy a wide variety
of roles as we push forward. Among other things, Thomas Malaby who
did extensive ethnographic work at Linden Labs has noted that even
Second Life owes a great deal of its structure and function to
video games as a result of the experience many of the SL developers
had in the industry prior to becoming Lindens (Malaby, 2009). In
pursuing our agenda of applied research, ARVEL researchers will
undoubtedly look both forward towards new and emerging game related
developments, and back towards the core elements of games that
predate the digital manifestations that continue to define many of
our virtual environments. As we continue on the journey, together
we will define and redefine how the study of games fits within the
ARVEL landscape. To return again to the words of a certain hobbit,
The Road goes ever on and on out from the door where it began. Now
far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can. (Tolkien,
1954) As we step out the door, we will surely be leaders and
followers by turns, as we endeavor together to find out where games
fit within ARVEL.
- Aubrecht, M. (2011). How pecha kucha, as a visual medium, is
ideal to demonstrate how games teach 21 stcentury skills. Presented
at the 7 thannual Games+Learning+Society conference. Madison, WI.
in June 2011.
- Barab, S.A., Gresalfi, M. & Ingram-Goble, A. (2010).
Transformational play: Using games to position person, content, and
context.Educational Researcher .39 (7), pp. 525-536.
- Cooper, T.L., Carroll, S.P., Liu, C., Franklin, T., &
Chelberg, D. (2009) Using the virtual world of Second Life to
create educational games for real world middle school science
classrooms. Presented at the World Conference on Educational
Multimedia, Hypermedia, and Telecommunications in Honolulu, HI. in
June 2009.
- Dede, C., Ketelhut, D. & Ruess, K. (2003). Motivation,
usability, and learning outcomes in a prototype museum-based
multiuser virtual environment. In P. Bell, R. Stevens, & T.
Satwicz, (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth ICLS. Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 24.
- Games, A. & Squire, K.D. (2011). Searching for the fun in
learning. In Tobias, S. & Fletcher, J.D. (Eds.),Computer games
and instruction.Charlotte, NC:Information Age Publishing.
- Gee, J.P. & Hayes, E.R. (2010).Women as gamers: The sims
and 21 stcentury learning , New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Gee, J.P. & Hayes, E.R. (2011)Language and learning in the
digital age . New York, NY: Routledge
- Gillispie, L.
(2011).http://minecraftinschool.pbworks.com/w/page/37244189/FrontPage
. Retrieved June 27, 2011.
- Ito, M. (2007). Education v. entertainment: A culturalhistory
of childrens software. In K. Salen (Ed.),Ecology of Games .
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Malaby, T.M. (2009).Making virtual worlds: Linden lab and
second life . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
- Marino, M.T. (2010). Conceptualizing RTI in 21st-century
secondary science classrooms: Video games' potential to provide
tiered support and progress monitoring for students with learning
disabilities.Learning disability quarterly 33 (4) pg. 299.
- Rosenheck, L., Perry, J., & Klopfer, E. (2011). Beetles,
beasties, and bunnies: Ubiquitous games for biology. Presented at
the 7 thannual Games+Learning+Society conference. Madison, WI. in
June, 2011.
- Salen, K., Torres, R., Wolozin, L., Rufo-Tepper, R., &
Shapiro, A. (2010).Quest to learn: Developing the school for
digital kids . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Steinkuehler, C. (2010). Video games and digital
literacies.Journal of adolescent and adult literacy .54 (1), pp.
61-63.
- Squire, K.D. (2011).Video games and learning :Teaching and
participatory culture in the digital age . New York, NY: Teachers
College Press.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 25.
- Tabula Digita (2011).http://www.dimensionu.com/math/ .
Retrieved June 27, 2011.
- Tolkien, J.R.R. (1954)The fellowship of the ring . New York,
NY: Ballantine Books.
ARVEL SIG SuperNewsletter 01 (July 2011) 26.
- Virtual Worlds: A Metaverse of Styles,
- Annie Jeffery, ARVEL SuperNews Virtual Worlds Editor
- Welcome, were really excited to launch this super newsletter
and to begin working with all of you. First of all, I would like to
introduce myself. My name is Annie Jeffery and Ill be your virtual
worlds section editor. Originally an archaeologist, I have worked
in educational technology since 1999 as educational technologist
and instructional designer. Research interests have included social
media, languages, multicultural education, biometrics and
authentication, web 2.0 and intellectual property rights,
languages, learning repositories and learning technology standards.
I have been active in virtual teaching and researching since late
2006, taught virtual worlds classes for Boise State University
since 2008. At present, I am busy working on my doctoral studies
and my main focus of interest is the pedagogy of sound.
- What do vision do I have for the virtual worlds section?
- Virtual worlds have provided a fertile ground for collaboration
and research, I feel that this newsletter could build on existing
and create future communities of practice.
- It could provide a forum to create new teams between
practitioners and researchers, thereby sharing expertise and
resources for all concerned. This would not only further
professional development, but provide avenues for research in
authentic educational environments. A blend of newsletter with
in-world events, the create mini conferences in world would enable
individual researchers to discuss their work with interested
parties, share skills, expertise and research in an open,
collaborative environment, which is also accessible to the wider
world. The newsletter gives us an opportunity to:
- debate the issue of where to now for virtual worlds
research
- discuss virtual worlds across their broad history of
application and research; from MUDs, MOOs and MUSHs to Second Life,
OpenSim,
- provide access to a range of virtual worlds through the member
network
- disseminate events, news items, opportunities and conferences
of ARVEL sig members and the wider world
- encourage contributions from ARVEL SIG members for future
newsletters
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 27.
- commission newsletter items from virtual world researchers
across all academic disciplines
- I also hope that you, our members, will suggest items or ideas
that will help shape this newsletter to support your
interests.
ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01 (July 2011) 28. ARVEL SIG SuperNews 01
(July 2011)