Spotlight MacArthur Foundation

Katie Salen: When Learning Happens in the Spaces Between

Filed at 8:00 am on December 11, 2007 • Leave a comment

While I have been a professor for many years I recently took on a project that has thrown me deep into consideration of the future of learning as it relates to my own field of study: game design. The project is the design of a new 6th grade through 12th grade public school. What makes the school different from many traditional schools is that it is being designed to support what is becoming known as “game-like learning,” or learning that takes its cues from the intrinsic qualities of games and play.

In addition, we have been doing a lot of work around the concept of the “ellipse,” focusing our efforts on the design of toolsets and curricula that bridge physical and imaginary spaces, public and private contexts, traditional literacies and 21st century skills. Personally, I tend to use the ellipse-those sequential three dots—to fault when writing emails or conversing through Ichat, as it serves as shorthand in these spaces for “I am still speaking,” or “take this as an incomplete thought.I’m still working on it.” I use the ellipse equally often when text messaging and have found that it lends itself well to the culture of multitasking in which I, and my students are most often immersed. I can be working on several things at once, using the ellipse as the bridge between. Even now I’m imagining this post as an ellipse that I will surely return to again before long. Last, the ellipse can represent presence, as in “I am still here” and “Hold on, I will be back.” In the context of the design of a school the concept of an ellipse references learning as something that may be initiated in one space but continued in another. The term embraces the idea that learning persists in the pathways between experiences, communities, and contexts, and reconsiders “school” as just one node within a larger network of learning spaces within and across which students move.

A next step will be to expand our own ideas about what constitutes the network in an age where navigation of the connective tissue is the primary space in which learning occurs. As a result, institutions in which learning persists attend to the mechanics of transition, designing infrastructures that exist equally between traditional knowledge domains and experimental practice, not so much occupying space as creating the signposts for movement through it.

Next: [Reblogged] Henry Jenkins: Reconsidering Digital Immigrants... > >

< < Previous: Kurt Squire: Building Academic Identities through After School Gaming

Save or share this post

Tags

Tags: 21st-century-learning, game-design, learning-institutions