James Paul Gee
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Posted on February 14 2007 5:31 PM

One thing that became clear to me from listening to Nichole, David, and Sasha on Thursday was that in different ways they all resonate with the idea that learning anything new and worth learning is always first and foremost an invitation to a change in identityówhere I am using the word ìidentityî in very much the sense of a ìroleî in a RPG (Role Playing Game).  Kids need to be able to PLAY a role so that they can later take on that role ìfor realî as one of their ìways of being in the worldî.  But even this ìfor realî is, as people like Goffman so well argued, itself a form of role-playing.  So much of school is devoted to reading manuals that have become detached from their games and to playing uninteresting roles that never really ìlevel upî in a coherent and meaningful way.  If we want depth in the roles available at school, we have to widen the playing field, in several different senses: get out of the school room and get more types of players on the field.  In their own way, Nichole, David, and Sasha are doing all these thingsóand it is exciting to see how many different ways we can get the games back with the manuals (texts) and the playing field expanded.  I hope we let a thousand flowers bloom.

Barry Joseph
Global Kids, Inc.
http://holymeatballs.org
Posted on February 14 2007 6:09 PM

Ooh, that’s me! The guy in the last photo waving his hands like a conductor. As you can see, people young and old were fascinated to learn more about our work (Global Kids) working with teens to make games for the Web and using the virtual world Second Life for global-issue leadership development.

Since most adults have no access to the teen grid, they were very interested to see it through the eyes of my own avatar, meet the teens who dropped by in-world to say hi, and learn how it can be used for education.

Attending both academic and commercial gaming conferences these past fews years, I had anticipated an audience that had also been involved with those communities, people who have been around the block a few time and were familiar with some of the common challenges and issues raised by treating games as a tool for learning.

Rather, to my delight and surprise, this appeared to be the first encounter for much of the audience with these existing communities. I met high school principals, librarians, and more who had traveled from around the country to be at this event.

Why did the come to this event instead of the ones I can now list by rote, ones MUCH closer to their homes? Because MacArthur was able to bridge these communities in a way the existing communities of practice have not.

It was as exciting for me to hear from a rural New York high school principal about why he drove all the way to make it to this event as it was to turn him on to the closer-to-home gaming events located in New York City.

David Williamson Shaffer
University of Wisconsin-Madison
http://epistemicgames.org
Posted on February 16 2007 1:45 PM

Personally, I was inspired by the public forum on games and digital learning. The consistent theme--from my fellow presenters, from Jonathan Fanton, the head of the Macarthur Foundation, and from the audience as a whole--was, I thought, one of optimism in the face of challenges.

But this was more than wishful optimism. It was optimism born of hard work. The panelists and the audience were not just talking about their hopes for what games can do to help children learn. The discussion was about what we know from our collective studies of games and learning.

What we know, the forum showed, backs up optimism with solid evidence of successes. Nichole Pinkard has been busy showing that schools can change to take advantage of the power of games and other digital technologies. Sasha Barab’s work shows how a well-designed game can succeed in school settings. My own work shows that games can help children develop new and powerful ways of thinking. From the audience, Kurt Squire talked about his research on how commercial games can help children learn at home and in school.

Perhaps most inspiring was the context itself: the Macarthur Foundation’s new initiative to support this research, to build on the understanding we already have about games in the digital future. As a result, the discussion was forward-looking as well, thinking about next steps and future directions in the transformation of education. But it was the best kind of forward-looking optimism: hope that arises from practical experience and solid research.