AERA: Applied to me

Below (posted previously), I've basically thrown my notes from the AERA (American Education Research Association) conference that I spent 6 days at. It was utterly mind-saturating for me -- to the point where Saturday afternoon I could even not recall how many sessions I'd been to in the morning (it was one), much less who presented in them, or what they presented on. So does that mean it was a waste of time? No, it does not -- because I took notes!!! Wow! I read through them and I'm transferred right back into the packed airless hot rooms, elbow to elbow. And not only did I take notes on the individucal presentations within the sessions, but I also had a file open where I actively appliled concepts, tricks, and turns-of-phrase directly to my research (some not very well, I'll admit. But I'll go back and fix them I hope). So here is a rough copy of those thoughts:

Augmented Reality Games on Handhelds -- Mystery Trip
What is it?
It is a four-day deep woods hiking camping trip that is structured by a GPS-enabled location-based inquiry game. One scenario is based on a trip from the 1920s where campers followed the trails of "forgers, kidnappers, and thieves" finding clues, solving puzzles, and breaking codes, in order to track down "the loot."

Participants are asked to beta-test a game that is under development, and offer their feedback and suggestions on it. They simultaneously take on the roles of game player and game designer as they work together and independently in tasks related to camping, playing the game, and critiquing/redesigning the game.

Components

• Sociocultural learning: One PDA, four players, and one counselor on a 4-day camping trip. It's an ensemble effort. They share the PDA. They share the problems (and their specific areas of expertise). They work together in the game and in the camping experience. In the creatio of the game, they use the developed Discourse of their individual group (inside jokes, etc.) but also need to connect it to the Discourse of the larger group (camp), and the Discourse of their peer groups outside of camp. Of course, they will also need to connect is to the Discourse of the dominant culture (adults).

• Activity Theory: Through the GPS- and handheld-mediated activity they interact with each other in the physical environment to solve problems posed in that environment by their peers. Through the software-mediated activity of game redesign, they pose problems for their peers.

• Place-based Learning: "Distance Learning" is brought to the place(s) of the learner. It is mobile -- the content is local but the knowledge/ideas are global.

• Identity Construction / Role Playing:

• Environmental Education:

Motivation vs. Learning

• Need both

Relation to Classrooms and teaching
What type of question can I ask that will grab the attention and be relevant and applicable to teachers?
Problems that Design of AR Games address

• Cultural: We are losing our connection with the places we live in and move through. Cultures are built on and connected to stories of activities in space that make spaces into culturally meaningful places.
• Kinesthetic: our bodies are becoming less substantially involved in the process of learning.
• Health: In most cyber environments, our physical bodies are largely ignored and ill-treated (sedentary, bad posture, eye strain, digit strain, lethargy, poor diet, etc.). (This is significantly different than the idea of embodiment, which can be very rich in some games -- see Katie Clinton's work for more on this).
• Ecological: we neglect to notice our environment, and therefore do not recognize or address our abuse of it.
• Social: we do not have enough compassion for others.
• Motivation:
• Involvement in learning: Players take on the role of game tester, and game designer. They learn to critique constructively because they experience the position of both the critiquer (as tester) and critiquee (as designer)
• Expense of Curricular Development: Inexpensive because it relies on real world for graphics (not just visual, but entirely immersive in sensory experiences). Also inexpensive because only the first version of the game needs to be designed; subsequent iterations are designed and improved upon by the players -- as part of the experience.

Possible Chapter Theses

1. Place-Based Pedagogy (and Environmental Awareness) -- "AR Games can be another place-based tool to counter the increasing loss of a sense of place"
2. Kinesthetic Learning -- "AR games can engage the
3. Design-Based Pedagogy -- "Employing a Constructionist pedagogy of learning..."

Different from (and richer than)...

• Video games: show pictures of controllers, of exercise/physical engagement, of "gamespace", of avatar/character, of social interaction (chat window vs. joke-telling)
• Classroom Learning: show pics of learning environment, of engagement, of controllers (?)

Lesson from Complex Systems talk: Causality vs. Emergence: don't frame it as "here's a problem, and here's how and why the problem is solved by AR Games" but instead as "here's an interesting thing that emerges when we do this; and when it occurs, these other things occur"

What are the "local feedback conditions"? (Fullen)