A few days ago I was meeting with a teacher who ran Urban Science in her classroom last year. We were sitting in her classroom after school, and talking about plans for her to run another version of the...
This video describes the epistemic game Urban Science, which simulates elements of the urban planning process to teach middle school and high school students how to think like urban planners. It was was produced to give educators a view into...
I had an interesting–and terrible–experience this past week. My email/calendar/addressbook/to-do list system had a catastrophic crash. For basically a week it just stopped working. Or, almost worse, it worked sporadically and unreliably.
I was suddenly caught without my external memory field,...
I just went to the game store with my oldest daughter and helped her pick out her first set of D&D rules and dice. I was so proud that it brought a tear to my eye.
...
A student at UW-Madison wrote a paper discussing the rehabilitative uses of the Wii. She included an interview with David Williamson Shaffer in which he discussed how video games create virtual worlds that are energizing for players.
Wii and Physical Therapy
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Svarovsky, Gina N. (2009) Unpacking the Digital Zoo: An analysis of the learning processes within an engineering epistemic game, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
http://epistemicgames.org/eg/wp-content/uploads/svarovsky-dissertation-revision-v26.pdf
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A lot of parents I know don’t play computer games with their children for the very obvious reason that they (meaning, the parents) don’t like to play computer games themselves. And that makes a certain amount of sense, until you...
Congratulations to Gina Svarovsky, who officially became the first Dr. of Epistemic Games yesterday! Gina’s dissertation will be available on the website here soon, and she will be going on to work at the Science Museum of Minnesota in the...
In working with the design team of Urban Science, I have developed a personal interest in urban regional planning. Although I have no role in designing the epistemic game Urban Science, the team members have demonstrated enough of the values...
Last month André Rupp, professor at the University of Maryland, visited the Epistemic Games Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Rupp, the Co-PI on the EAGER grant, participated in several discussions regarding the ideas and issues underlying Epistemic Network...
A few days ago I was meeting with a teacher who ran Urban Science in her classroom last year. We were sitting in her classroom after school, and talking about plans for her to run another version of the game this spring. We were excited because many of the same students from last year are in her class again and we thought it would be interesting to see how they played the game for the second time. Also, the site that the students would be researching and rezoning in the game was actually the neighborhood where the school is located and where most of the students live.
While we were talking, one of her students walked into the room. The teacher enthusiastically told her that the class would be playing Urban Science again this spring. The student looked at us and wordlessly unzipped her coat to reveal the Epistemic Games t-shirt that all of the players got the previous year.
While I don’t want to go too far in interpreting the synchronicity of this encounter, I couldn’t help but think that 5th graders do not make sartorial choices lightly. It can sometimes be hard to know the inner transformations that happen as kids are learning and growing. But every once in a while, if you are lucky, you can get an unzipped glimpse of what kids take with them.
This video describes the epistemic game Urban Science, which simulates elements of the urban planning process to teach middle school and high school students how to think like urban planners. It was was produced to give educators a view into what playing urban science is like. The video includes footage of middle school students playing and talking about a version of Urban Science that ran in 2007, and also interview footage with a teacher from Lakeview Elementary in Madison, Susan Hobart, who ran a version of the game in the spring of 2009 in her classroom.
I had an interesting–and terrible–experience this past week. My email/calendar/addressbook/to-do list system had a catastrophic crash. For basically a week it just stopped working. Or, almost worse, it worked sporadically and unreliably.
I was suddenly caught without my external memory field, without reliable communications, and without any way to reliably deal with the information that was coming into my life. I had come to depend on this technology, and then it failed.
A lot of things fell through the cracks: phone calls, doctor’s appointments, email exchanges.
[For those of you wondering, I did manage to recover the data. But if you sent me email last week and didn't hear back, it might be a good idea to resend it!]
The result, though, was an opportunity to ponder, first hand, one of the darker sides of technology…
I just went to the game store with my oldest daughter and helped her pick out her first set of D&D rules and dice. I was so proud that it brought a tear to my eye.
A student at UW-Madison wrote a paper discussing the rehabilitative uses of the Wii. She included an interview with David Williamson Shaffer in which he discussed how video games create virtual worlds that are energizing for players.
Svarovsky, Gina N. (2009) Unpacking the Digital Zoo: An analysis of the learning processes within an engineering epistemic game, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A lot of parents I know don’t play computer games with their children for the very obvious reason that they (meaning, the parents) don’t like to play computer games themselves. And that makes a certain amount of sense, until you think about all the other things that you do as a parent with and for your kids that you don’t like doing yourself.
I was reminded of this is a very concrete way last week when I took my daughter and one of her friends to a synchronized swimming meet for their team, which is the first synchro meet I had ever been to. I did it because this is something that my daughter cares about. Something that she wants to spend time on. An interest that I want to share with her, even if I don’t hold it as an interest of my own.
Now, please don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against synchro as a sport. But driving an hour and a half and sitting for over two hours to…
Oh, well, rather than trying to explain, I’ll just copy my liveblog of the event below, which I imagine is not that different from how many parents experience watching their first videogame. It was really confusing, and a lot of it seemed pretty trivial to me as an outsider. But it was fun for my daughter, and in the end brings us closer together and lets me help shape her experience of that part of her life.
For those who don’t want to read below the jump, the point is: as a parent we do all kinds of things that our kids love but we don’t. And just like the decision to go see the latest Disney movie, whether you as a parent like to play computer games is not the last word on whether your could or should play them with your kids.
Congratulations to Gina Svarovsky, who officially became the first Dr. of Epistemic Games yesterday! Gina’s dissertation will be available on the website heresoon, and she will be going on to work at the Science Museum of Minnesota in the spring.
Gina’s dissertation is one of the first studies to use Epistemic Network Analysis to look at the impact of specific parts of a game on the development of professional thinking. Her study of Digital Zoo found that interactions with clients and reflections in an engineering notebook play a key role in making the values and epistemology of engineering explicit for players.
As the first graduate student in the Epistemic Games Group, Gina was instrumental in helping to establish the research directions and practices of the group. We will miss her very much, wish her well in in future ventures, and hope that from time to time she will drop in with a post on news epistemic!
In working with the design team of Urban Science, I have developed a personal interest in urban regional planning. Although I have no role in designing the epistemic game Urban Science, the team members have demonstrated enough of the values in the game, so that I see the importance in the task of urban planning. The time I spend as the videographer, conducting interviews, editing and creating a demo for the game has given me a window of knowledge into the realm of urban planning. Also, as an anthropology major, I am exposed to the infinite amount of issues surrounding the human species, and it just so happens that city planning is one of them. The topics I have observed from working with the design team, combined with the topics I discuss in class have inspired me to consider pursuing graduate studies in the field of urban and regional planning. I would be particularly interested in working on the cultural aspects of city planning, such as interacting with interest groups to understand their wants and needs. Thanks to the Urban Science development team, I have discovered a new interest which could potentially be a fascinating career. That urban planning is a potentially more lucrative career than anthropology doesn’t hurt either.
Last month André Rupp, professor at the University of Maryland, visited the Epistemic Games Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Rupp, the Co-PI on the EAGER grant, participated in several discussions regarding the ideas and issues underlying Epistemic Network Analysis, while he was here. One meeting, with David Shaffer and Mike Gleicher, centered on a proposed method for converting adjacency matrices into coordinates in n-dimensional space and comparing them by calculating the distance between them. In effect, this method controls for the number of speech act occurrences by comparing frame shapes, rather than frame sizes. Another benefit of this method is the afforded ability to visualize learning trajectories.
Andre also experienced the joys of several of Wisconsin’s customs and culinary treasures during his stay, including–but not limited to–cheese curds and Old Fashioneds.
The Epistemic Games Group is made up of researchers, educators, and game designers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If you’re interested in building and studying epistemic games and the future of education, find out more about who we are, and what we do. We’re always interested in talking with potential collaborators and new epistemic gamers….
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