The Annual GLS Conference took place at UWM June 10-12. What a treat! This conference is chock full of researchers, practitioners, and teachers that are interested in gaming, virtual worlds, and simulations for education. Here are my main takeaways.
1. It's not about games. It's about situated cognition, constructionism, constructivism, and active learning. Games, virtual worlds, and simulations embody these theories and bring them to life.
2. Jim Gee is the guru in this area, and rightly so. His broad swath of knowledge allows him to place all this in perspective, to give us a glimmer of where it all fits in the scheme of things. Read one of his books and you know what I mean. I was able to hear him as the conf keynote, then later in a much more informal Q&A session.
3. I participated in Real-time Research while attending the conference. This was a double session (one at the beginning, one at the end of the conf.) where teams devised a research question, tested it during the conf., analyzed gathered data, and reported out on their findings.
This sounds suspiciously like ETS' Hot Team Process, and I believe it would make a nice "snap-on" component for future Hot Teams where some data gathering from subjects makes sense. The only issue is IRB approval if we want to publish our results. That's not a minor issue, and I'll need to do some digging to see what's possible at PSU.
The neat thing is my team won best data analysis, and we get to publish our work in an upcoming book on RTR that will be produced by CMUs ETS-Press.
4. Some educators are producing in-house tools to develop games. By next year, it should be quite interesting to see what emerges.
5. Mobile gaming is gaining steam. IMO platform differences hamper this; you have to tie your development efforts to a platform, thus limiting distribution. I will continue to monitor this space, and at the EGC our developer, Jason Wolfe, continues to refine his knowledge in this area.
6. The people and connections I made are, as usual, at least as valuable as the conf sessions. This almost goes without saying, but it's worth noting that the frontier mentality re: ed gaming is slowing wearing away, to be replaced by a more mature, normal one. By this I mean people are increasingly collaborating, rubbing shoulders and sharing ideas, and devising joint projects. People are tapping into traditional funding agents, as these agents are now funding in this area.
I'm also seeing the Empire-builders appearing, the folk that always twist ANY conversation around to their projects, their ideas, their ways of thinking. If you fail to fall into their narcissistic black hole, they immediately discard you are irrelevant. How sad, yet how expected. There are two people I admired for some time that I met at the conf. that fit this category. My admiration for them has dimmed.
Finally, to read my minute-by-minute thoughts while attending the conference, see http://twitter.com/#search?q=brettbixler%20gls09
1. It's not about games. It's about situated cognition, constructionism, constructivism, and active learning. Games, virtual worlds, and simulations embody these theories and bring them to life.
2. Jim Gee is the guru in this area, and rightly so. His broad swath of knowledge allows him to place all this in perspective, to give us a glimmer of where it all fits in the scheme of things. Read one of his books and you know what I mean. I was able to hear him as the conf keynote, then later in a much more informal Q&A session.
3. I participated in Real-time Research while attending the conference. This was a double session (one at the beginning, one at the end of the conf.) where teams devised a research question, tested it during the conf., analyzed gathered data, and reported out on their findings.
This sounds suspiciously like ETS' Hot Team Process, and I believe it would make a nice "snap-on" component for future Hot Teams where some data gathering from subjects makes sense. The only issue is IRB approval if we want to publish our results. That's not a minor issue, and I'll need to do some digging to see what's possible at PSU.
The neat thing is my team won best data analysis, and we get to publish our work in an upcoming book on RTR that will be produced by CMUs ETS-Press.
4. Some educators are producing in-house tools to develop games. By next year, it should be quite interesting to see what emerges.
5. Mobile gaming is gaining steam. IMO platform differences hamper this; you have to tie your development efforts to a platform, thus limiting distribution. I will continue to monitor this space, and at the EGC our developer, Jason Wolfe, continues to refine his knowledge in this area.
6. The people and connections I made are, as usual, at least as valuable as the conf sessions. This almost goes without saying, but it's worth noting that the frontier mentality re: ed gaming is slowing wearing away, to be replaced by a more mature, normal one. By this I mean people are increasingly collaborating, rubbing shoulders and sharing ideas, and devising joint projects. People are tapping into traditional funding agents, as these agents are now funding in this area.
I'm also seeing the Empire-builders appearing, the folk that always twist ANY conversation around to their projects, their ideas, their ways of thinking. If you fail to fall into their narcissistic black hole, they immediately discard you are irrelevant. How sad, yet how expected. There are two people I admired for some time that I met at the conf. that fit this category. My admiration for them has dimmed.
Finally, to read my minute-by-minute thoughts while attending the conference, see http://twitter.com/#search?q=brettbixler%20gls09
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