Posted: April 4th, 2013 | Author: Cassandra Xia | Filed under: Assignment 7 | No Comments »
I was inspired by the Klopfer and Sheldon paper in which the authors transitioned students from playing a game about environmentalism to authoring their own environmentalism game. The act of having students develop their own game was valuable both for content creation specific to the students’ geographical location and as a learning process. I really admired this approach for its pragmatic value– fewer resources are required because students can be relied upon to generate content as part of the learning process!
This was the first time I have thought of user-based content generation from the context of learning, and I am excited about the scalability of the idea. In addition, to requiring fewer “expert” users and “teachers, I think that the idea may be powerful from a motivational perspective. Requiring users to generate content that will be used by other users, may motivate them to yield higher quality content. Beyond the environmentalism game example, I think the technique could be used more generally in the form of teaching. I frequently hear TAs or professors say that you really learn material when you have to teach it. What if we could apply the same concept to regular students? Imagine a student is learning a subject and given questions probing their understanding of the material in the traditional manner. Imagine that the student is told that with some X% probability, their answer will be given to another student learning the same material when the other student is stuck and, in keeping with the quiz show “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire”, phones a friend for help. In this scenario, the student may be motivated to learn the material more carefully for the sake of potentially helping a classmate down the road. The student may be more motivated in this group learning scenario than individualized learning. Humans are social beings after all, and user-based content generation during learning may be useful for more than content creation.
Posted: April 4th, 2013 | Author: Anirudh | Filed under: Assignment 7 | No Comments »
AR has tremendous potential- Games are themselves interesting because they demand critical thinking and involve the user emotionally due to games’ incentive or the mere thrill involved during the play. The idea of unfolding history/drama in the locations where it has actually occured is new and possible with AR. Though i believe joy of learning has got nothing to do with the complexity of technology componenets involved.
Though while designing such systems we’ve to be careful about over-bombarding the user with data/information more than the user can digest. Games esp. fall into such danger due to the short sensory time in making quick decisions.
The author’s ideas about using players as game characters is interesting. Though in a fast paced game it could be distracting, the same is more relavant when the user is involved in exploring an area and needs human contexts to it. e.g. overlaying ex-presidents while someone points at the white house. OR a game in which the player is contesting against his friends.
The overall work also reminds me of
http://arisgames.org/demo/ done at U-Wisconsin
Posted: April 4th, 2013 | Author: dhairyadand | Filed under: Assignment 7 | No Comments »
As opposed to full blown AR implementations like the upcoming glasses and the otherwise vision of full AR, it was a good break reading about something that was partial and location based AR games. Although AR was responsible for the overlay and display in the mobile games, I think the reason for their success is that the system is PLAYFUL! People actually go out and explore, emotions are evoked, people are engaged, in such a situation I feel even with limited AR and display in terms of mobile, the outdoor aspect of it more than compensates for it. There was also an interesting take in the other paper regarding ubiquitous learning – the benefits – especially the fact that the previous learning profile is always continued – the persistency and the situatedness of the aid. I am not fully convinced that a mobile is a good platform for learning, even for that matter the AR glasses – I mean, they can give you information – they can give you knowledge, facts – but so much of learning is doing, being, and more importantly SENSORY. Visual being just one of those senses. And the success of the apps mentioned in the reading is attributed to the multimodal nature of their use – although only the visuals were digital, rest was ANALOG.
My big takeaways from the reading was that PLAYFULNESS and MULTIMODAL (DIGITAL + ANALOG) play as much an important role in learning as JUST IN TIME and CONTEXTUAL.
Posted: April 3rd, 2013 | Author: Sophia | Filed under: Assignment 7 | No Comments »
I thought the system that was developed for learning Japanese polite phrases was an extremely good example of just-in-time learning, and it made me think about what might be some other good applications. Maybe a similar system could be used to help people give public presentations. A wearable device that reminds the user of their notes on a particular slide might be a much less intrusive than the speaker reading their notes from a computer. In addition, perhaps such a system could help pull up relevant notes and research during Q&A. Both would help the user maintain their connection with the audience much better than having to look at things on a screen on the podium. Also, maybe a system like this could help people in dating situations…helping them get through initial icebreaker questions, reminding them of the other person’s interests, etc.
The location-based AR games were also interesting. I liked the idea of certain games being written for a specific geographical location, especially as tools to improve the landscape or to encourage people in those locations to get to know each other. The article also mentioned games which get customized to whatever location you are in, and both of these types of AR games are discussed in great detail in the science fiction novel,
Halting State, by Charles Stross. In his novel, he wrote about an elaborate spy game that actually turned out to be a real branch of the government secret service. Players were unknowingly working for the government against actual terrorist threats.
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